It is temporally circular, not logically circular. It's a pernicious cycle. It has been headed for disaster for a while, but like a lot of economic trends that were (and are) obviously headed for disaster, people tended to think it could go for another ten or twenty years, a horizon that has really shrunk due to the fact that the economy has choked.
If the economy doesn't really pick up in the next year I think we're going to see some very shocking numbers come next fall admission.
I don't know that that's a circular argument so much as a vicious cycle. Perhaps I am reading too deep, but that's the exact point the article seems to be making.
