20th Anniversary of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education

First published in November 2005 by Monthly Review Press, Reclaiming the Ivory Tower quickly became a breakthrough organizing handbook for contingent, often adjunct, faculty in U.S. higher education. Authored by Joe Berry, a labor educator with the Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, the book combined structural analysis with practical organizing tools and remains widely influential. 

Author’s Ongoing Influence

Joe Berry’s longstanding work—as a historian and labor educator affiliated with institutions like the University of Illinois’s Chicago Labor Education Program and Roosevelt University—has helped shape adjunct organizing both in Chicago and beyond. Berry's most recent focus is with a new project, Higher Ed Labor United (HELU), and with Democratic Socialists of America.

Two Decades On: The Struggle Persists

Though adjunct faculty now make up the majority of instructors at many colleges, the precarious conditions Berry described—marked by low pay, limited benefits, and job insecurity—endure. His organizing models, featuring campus committees and community alliances, have borne fruit in isolated victories. Yet, systemic inequities remain.

Reclaiming the Ivory Tower remains a foundational resource for grassroots organizing in academia. Its emphasis on coalition-building and collective action continues to inspire adjuncts, labor activists, and academic allies.

Power Despite Precarity 

Just at the time of HELU’s birth, and as COVID was still raging, Berry and his colleague, partner and fellow contingent faculty Helena Worthen, published a follow up book, Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the contingent faculty movement in higher education (2021, Pluto Press). Using one of the most successful local unions in higher education, the CA Faculty Association (SEIU, AAUP) for contingents, the book tells the story of their limited, but very real, successes, and suggests some strategic visions for the movement and our goals for higher education.

A New Wave of National Coordination

In March 2024, Inside Higher Ed reported that Higher Ed Labor United—a developing national coalition—was emerging to bridge divisions between higher education workers, regardless of union affiliation or job title. Joe Berry serves on its interim steering committee, signaling his continued leadership in academic labor unity.

HELU’s vision is threefold: to serve as a political voice, a think tank for higher education labor, and a supporting infrastructure for organizing across campuses. The coalition thus builds on Berry’s grassroots foundations by adding a national dimension to the effort.

Timeline of Adjunct Organizing: 2005–2025

2005–2009: Organizing spreads through AFT and NEA-affiliated adjunct campaigns, adopting Berry’s strategies of solidarity with tenure-track faculty and students.
2010–2014: Digital movements like #AdjunctNation increase visibility. Labor drives gain traction at private and niche institutions.
2015–2019: The SEIU’s Faculty Forward initiative secures pay gains and multi-year contracts in cities like Boston and LA.
2020–2022: COVID-19 exacerbates adjunct precarity. Virtual organizing leads to some wins, but layoffs and instability rise.
2023–2025: Broader solidarity emerges—adjuncts band with student and staff labor movements. Union campaigns increasingly connect to critiques of austerity and corporatization.

Looking Ahead

With its 20th anniversary slated for November 2025, Reclaiming the Ivory Tower stands as much more than a historical landmark—it’s a blueprint for current and future organizing. While awareness of adjunct labor issues has grown, sustainable and structural transformation requires persistent organizing, cross-campus solidarity, and the sort of national coalition-building that HELU represents.

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Sources

• Berry, Joe. Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press, 2005. [monthlyreview.org reference; meet the author site]

• “Higher Ed Workers Seek to Coordinate Nationally.” Inside Higher Ed, March 26, 2024. Includes details on HELU and Joe Berry’s role

• National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions data trends

• Inside Higher Ed reporting on adjunct unionization, strikes, and SEIU campaigns 

Comparing Adjunct Faculty Conditions: 2006 vs. 2025 — From Crisis to Collapse (Glen McGhee)

In 2006, Washington state adjunct advocate Keith Hoeller described a higher education labor system already in deep trouble—adjuncts were underpaid, lacked job security, and served as a buffer protecting tenured faculty from cuts. Nearly two decades later, those warnings seem less like early alarms and more like an obituary for the tenure system. By 2025, the crisis has metastasized.

Pay and Financial Security: Poverty Wages Become the Norm

In 2006, Hoeller reported that Washington community college adjuncts earned just 57 cents for every dollar paid to their full-time colleagues. The disparity persists—and in some ways, it has widened. Today, more than a quarter of adjuncts report earning under $26,500 a year, below the federal poverty line for a family of four.

Course pay in 2025 still averages between $2,500 and $5,000, with some positions offering as little as $1,500 per course. Melissa Olson-Petrie’s 2025 account captures the reality vividly: adjuncts can be “required in teaching five or more classes a semester, with occasional overload schedules depleting your very marrow,” yet still earn tens of thousands less annually than full-time peers.

Job Security and Contract Precarity: From Insecure to Systematically Disposable

Adjuncts in 2006 faced last-minute class cancellations and almost no job security. In 2025, the instability is institutionalized. Seventy-six percent of part-time contingent faculty are on short-term, nonrenewable contracts. Olson-Petrie notes that adjuncts can lose all scheduled work with only seven days’ notice before a semester begins.

The Scale of Adjunctification: Contingency Becomes the Default

In 1987, 47 percent of U.S. faculty held contingent appointments; by 2006, there were about half a million adjunct professors. In 2025, 68 percent of all faculty are contingent, and 49 percent are part-time. This is no longer a marginal or temporary workforce—it is the dominant teaching corps in American higher education.

Union Representation: Gains, Losses, and Legislative Blows

Unionization of academic workers has expanded since 2006, with graduate student organizing seeing a 133 percent increase between 2012 and 2024. Yet the structural imbalance Hoeller warned of remains: full-time faculty often dominate mixed bargaining units, leaving adjunct priorities underrepresented.

The 2025 landscape also includes outright reversals. In Florida, where adjunct organizing had surged, all eight adjunct faculty unions—representing more than 8,000 professors—were dissolved in 2024 under state law requiring 60 percent dues-paying membership.

Academic Freedom: Now an Explicit Target

In both 2006 and 2025, adjuncts lacked tenure protections. But in the current political climate, academic freedom is under direct attack. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education warns that when three out of four professors lack tenure, political retaliation becomes easier. Recent non-reappointments at CUNY of adjuncts advocating for Palestinian rights show how swiftly dissenting voices can be silenced.

Federal and Institutional Pressures: The Trump Freeze and Funding Cuts

New forces compound old problems. Under the Trump administration, federal funding cuts, research grant threats, and hiring freezes have hit even the wealthiest universities. Institutions from Harvard to state schools are eliminating positions, further constricting opportunities for full-time, stable faculty roles.

Structural Deterioration: A Fully Entrenched Two-Tier System

Hoeller’s 2006 call for adjuncts to form independent bargaining units largely went unheeded. Full-time faculty continue to benefit from adjunct labor as a flexible shield against cuts, while adjuncts themselves are treated—per Olson-Petrie—as “little more than a high-quality paper towel within the academy.”

From Labor Problem to Institutional Crisis

Nearly every issue identified in 2006 has worsened. Today’s 68 percent contingent faculty rate represents not just a failure to protect academic labor but a transformation of the profession itself. The adjunct of 2025 faces economic exploitation, permanent precarity, and political vulnerability in an environment where structural reform has stalled, and in many cases, reversed.

Without systemic change—separately empowered unions, funding reinvestment, and real job security—the profession risks losing its foundation: the ability of educators to teach freely, securely, and sustainably.

Sources: Inside Higher Ed, AAUP, NEA, SEIU Faculty Forward, FIRE, ACE, Higher Ed Dive, U.S. News, AFT.

HEI Resources

[Updated January 8, 2023)

 

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Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

• Academe Blog
• Adjunct Crisis
• Adjunct Nation
• American Federation of Teachers Adjunct-Contingent Faculty Caucus
• Bryan Alexander (Futurist)
• Campus News (New York)
• Cheeky Scientist (Career Training for Ph.D.'s)
• Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor
• College Futures Foundation (California, K-20)
• College is a Risky Business (Thomas B. Walsh)
• College Promise (Free Community College)
• College Tuition Advisory Services (CTAS)
• College Viability App (Gary Stocker)
• Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Faculty
• Condemned to Debt (Richard Fossey)
• Confessions of a College Professor (Professor Doom)
• Debt Collective
• Deep Thoughts on Higher Education (Jeff Doyle) 
• Diane Ravitch (K-12)
• Harvard Project on Predatory Student Lending
• Higher Ed Not Debt
• Higher Education Strategy Associates
• I Am Ai
• ITT Tech Warriors
• Jim Wolfston and the Social Mobility Index (CollegeNet)
  
• Jonathan Kozol (K-12)
• Kelchen on Education
  
• National Consumer Law Center
• New Faculty Majority (Adjuncts)
• New Laws For America (Bob Hertz)
• Outside the Law School Scam
• Randall Collins (Credentialism and Credential Inflation)
• Remaking the University
• Republic Report (David Halperin)
• Saving For College (Mark Kantrowtitz)
• SEIU Faculty Forward (Adjuncts)
• Steve Foerster (Technologist and Educator)
• Strike Debt Portland
• Student Borrower Protection Center
• Student Debt Crisis
• Student Loan Justice
• Terri Givens (Radical Empathy)
• TuitionFit (Mark Salisbury)
• Whistleblower Revolution (Heidi Weber)
• Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
• Wrench in the Gears: A Skeptical Parent's Thoughts on Digital Curriculum (K-12)

 College Choice and Career Planning Tools

• TuitionFit 
• College Viability App
  
• Hechinger Report College Fitness Tracker
  
• NBC News Investigation: Certificate schools are leaving many students in debt and unable to find jobs
• 2/3s of US Employees Regret Their College Degrees (CBS News)
• Free Tuition in 15 states (Century Foundation/Inside Higher Education)
• Free Community College (CNBC)
• The Future of Work Won't Be About College Degrees (CNBC, Stepane Kasriel)
• Student Loan Meltdown (Dave Ramsey)
• Permanent Underemployment for College Grads (Burning Glass Technologies)
• College Is A Risky Proposition For The Working Class (Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report)
• 15 Things College Doesn't Teach You
• Best Colleges for Social Mobility (CollegeNet)
• The Case Against Higher Education (Bryan Caplan)
• College May Not Pay Off For Everyone (Liberty Street Economics/NY FED)
• Online Education Has Questionable Outcomes (IHE)
• Colleges Where Most Students Borrow and Few Repay (TICAS)
• Broke, Busted, and Disgusted Trailer (Student Loan Debt)
• The Confusing Information Colleges Provide Students About Financial Aid (The Atlantic)
• Apprenticeship Finder (US Department of Labor)
• Best Value Colleges (PayScale)
• College Affordability and Transpareny Center (ED)
• Washington Monthly College Rankings
• Public College Dropout Factories (Third Way)
• Outcomes By Major (NY FED)
• College Navigator (NCES)
• Third Way
• College Scorecard (NCES)
• GI Bill Comparison Tool (VA)
• Top 10 Tips For Veterans (Veterans Education Success)
• 8 Tips to Help Vets Pick the Right College (Military Times)
• Warrior Scholar (For Veterans)
• Service to School (For Veterans)
• Peer Advisors for Veteran Education (PAVE)

Innovation and Reform

• Strategies for Improving Student Success (Inside Higher Education)
• Gap Year Basics (NYU)
• Union Plus Free College
• College Promise 
  
• Free College In Six States (Century Foundation)
• Maryland Student Loan Debt Relief Tax Credit
• Canceling Student Loan Debt Would Grow Economy and Add Jobs (Levy Institute)
• Beyond Tuition: Promises for Affordability, Quality, and Accountability in Higher Education (Center for American Progress)
• Georgia State Turnaround (CHE)
• Spelman Health Initiative (IHE)
• University of Kansas: BA In Three Years
• Shady Grove: Nine Campuses in One (WAPO)
  

  

Higher Education Policy

• Veterans’ Education Advocates Celebrate Closure of the 90/10 Loophole
• College Transparency Act (Senate Bill 800)
• Dropping Gainful Employment Rules Gives Billions to Subprime Colleges (Inside Higher Education)
• ED Announces Steps to Hold Institutions Accountable for Taxpayer Losses
• FTC Head Says Supreme Court Ruling Puts More Than $2 Billion for Cheated Consumers at Risk (Brent Kendall, WSJ)
• GAO Report Regarding Online Program Managers
• How to Stop Sudden College Closures (Century Foundation)
• Improving Outcomes Data for Online Programs (Robert Kelchen, Inside Higher Education)
• Spelman College Replaces NCAA Sports with Wellness Programs
• Strengthening Rural Anchor Institutions: Federal Policy Solutions for Rural Public Colleges and the Communities They Serve (Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges)
• The Distributional Effects of Student Loan Forgiveness (BFI Working Paper, Sylvain Catherine and Constantine Yannelis)
• The for-profit college system is broken and the Biden administration needs to fix it (Brookings)
• The Impact of a National Program of Free Tuition at Public Community Colleges and Free Tuition for Most Students at Public Four-Year Colleges and Universities on College Enrollments, Graduations, and the Economy (Robert Shapiro and Isaac Yoder)
• Three Things Policymakers Can Do to Protect Online Students (Century Foundation) 
  

 

Data Sources

• American Association of State Colleges and Universities
• American Indian Higher Education Consortium
• Academic Labor Force Trends (AAUP)
• College Closing Projections (EY)
• College Closings (PEPS)
• College Costs Increasing Over Time (College Board)
• College Debt Inhibits Home Buying (CNBC)
• College Inc. (PBS/Frontline)
• College Meltdown Video
• Complete College America
  
• Debt by Degrees (Pro Publica)
• Department of Defense
• Education Statistics by Institution
• Enrollment Numbers 
• Excelencia in Education
• Growing Inland Achievement 
• Hechinger Report
• Heightened Cash Monitoring
• Inside Higher Education
• Long-term Student Loan Default Rates
• Lumina Foundation 
  
• National Assessment of Educational Progress
  
• National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA)
• National Center for Education Statistics
• National Student Clearinghouse 
  
• School Counselor Numbers (ASCA)
• Scientists Leaving Academia in Droves
• Starving the Beast: The Battle to Disrupt and Reform America’s Public Universities
• State by State College Debt (TICAS)
• Student Loan Debt By State (Urban Institute)
• Student Loan Debt Clock
• Student Loan Debt Inhibits Home Buying (CNBC)
• Student Loan Default Projections (Brookings)
• Subprime Colleges (David Halperin)
• The 74: America's Education News Source
  
• Third Way Reports
• Transfer Credit Problems (GAO)
• United Negro College Fund
  
• University Business Officers Reports
• US Financial Aid (2020-21 Annual Report) 
  
• Veterans Affairs (GI Bill)
• Veterans Education Success

Trade publications

• The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Inside Higher Ed
  

 

Shifting the Burden: Labor, Capital, and the University in the US 1969–2025

Over the last half-century, the U.S. economy has undergone a profound transformation, one that has consistently shifted wealth, power, and risk from labor to capital. Nowhere is this transfer more evident than in the American university. Once celebrated as engines of mobility and knowledge, colleges and universities have become laboratories for the financialization of labor and the exploitation of debt, producing both highly educated workers and precarious employment. The story of U.S. higher education mirrors the broader trajectory of labor in the postindustrial economy: the erosion of wages, benefits, and job security, replaced by indebtedness, contingent labor, and privatized risk.

In 1969, union membership in the U.S. reached historic heights, covering nearly one-third of workers, and wages broadly tracked productivity. Universities, like other sectors, offered stable employment, pensions, and health benefits for faculty and staff. Students could pursue degrees without accumulating crushing debt. Yet this stability faced systematic challenges. Rising global competition, stagflation in the 1970s, and growing corporate influence over politics and law set the stage for a deliberate weakening of labor. Influential business leaders, inspired by the Powell Memo of 1971, invested in reshaping regulations, judicial appointments, and cultural attitudes to protect capital and undermine collective worker power.

The higher education sector became a testing ground for these strategies. Universities increasingly adopted anti-union policies, aggressively resisting faculty organizing. Tenured and tenure-track positions stagnated, while the majority of teaching staff shifted to contingent and adjunct roles. Adjunct faculty, who now comprise the majority of instructors at many institutions, are paid a fraction of full-time salaries and frequently lack basic employment protections. Retirement and medical benefits are often unavailable, leaving adjuncts dependent on precarious contract work while navigating an academic labor market that demands high productivity and expertise. Meanwhile, students are encouraged to shoulder growing tuition costs through loans, creating a generation of indebted graduates whose economic vulnerability mirrors that of the adjunct faculty teaching them.

This debt-driven model reflects a broader trend in U.S. labor. As real wages stagnated across most industries, households turned to credit cards, home equity loans, and student loans to maintain living standards. Medical debt and inadequate access to health insurance became commonplace, and pension security eroded as defined-benefit plans gave way to 401(k)s tied to volatile financial markets. Universities, simultaneously relying on contingent labor and student debt, became both emblematic and instrumental in this shift. They profited from a system that exploited the labor of instructors while binding students into decades-long financial obligations.

The 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic further exposed these structural inequalities. Wall Street recovered rapidly through bailouts and financial consolidation, while millions of workers—including adjuncts and early-career academics—experienced housing loss, unemployment, and financial insecurity. Universities, too, leveraged these crises to consolidate programs, increase online offerings, and further casualize labor. Inflation fears and budget shortfalls became convenient rationales for suppressing wages, cutting benefits, and delaying retirement security.

By 2025, a new wave of labor activism is emerging, both inside and outside the academy. Union drives at Starbucks, Amazon, hospitals, and universities reflect widespread discontent, yet union density remains below ten percent. Legal obstacles, from Janus v. AFSCME to state-level right-to-work laws, continue to suppress organizing. Capital, for its part, has adapted. Endowments, private equity firms, hedge funds, and sovereign wealth funds dominate sectors from housing to healthcare to higher education. Pension funds, once a safeguard for workers, have been financialized into instruments that profit the very institutions and executives who outsource or eliminate labor protections.

The consequences are stark. Since 1969, productivity has more than doubled, but real wages for most workers have barely changed. CEO pay has increased by over a thousand percent, while median worker pay stagnates. Household debt exceeds seventeen trillion dollars. Universities, which were once supposed to provide pathways to mobility, increasingly rely on adjunct labor and student indebtedness to function. Workers in both corporate and academic sectors are often left without reliable health coverage or retirement security, forcing them into perpetual economic vulnerability.

Higher education exemplifies the paradox of U.S. labor in the postindustrial era: it produces a highly credentialed workforce while exploiting its own employees and saddling students with debt. The burden of sustaining American capitalism—through longer hours, reduced benefits, and relentless indebtedness—has shifted decisively onto labor. Whether this growing discontent can coalesce into a new labor movement or whether capital—including universities—will continue to restructure society in its own interest remains one of the central questions of our time.

Sources
Gordon Lafer, The Job Training Charade (2002)
Michael Hudson, The Bubble and Beyond (2012)
Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man (2011)
Economic Policy Institute, State of Working America Data Library
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Historical Tables

“How to Survive, Not Thrive”: The Chronicle’s Misleading Advice to Adjuncts

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published Erik Ofgang’s piece, “How to Thrive as an Adjunct Professor.” The article is framed as practical guidance from one contingent faculty member to others — a survival manual for the academe’s most disposable workers. But the framing itself is the problem. The Chronicle is not a neutral outlet dispensing helpful tips. It is an institution firmly embedded in the higher-ed Establishment, and its editorial choices reflect the interests of those who run that Establishment.

The suggestion that adjuncts can “thrive” is not merely optimistic; it is ideological. It normalizes a labor system built on underpayment, instability, and silent suffering. It helps institutions maintain a two-tier caste system in which tenure-line faculty enjoy stability, voice, and benefits, while adjuncts scramble semester-to-semester without a guarantee of renewed employment or even basic respect.

The Chronicle’s article treats precarity as a lifestyle challenge rather than a structural failure. That framing deflects attention away from institutional responsibility. The reason adjuncts have to piece together multiple jobs, endure last-minute course assignments, and live without healthcare is not that they lack good strategies. It is because universities — including the ones that proudly subscribe to the Chronicle — have chosen to replace stable academic jobs with contingent, low-paid labor.

Turning exploitation into a self-help genre is a subtle form of gaslighting. Instead of pressuring institutions to create full-time positions, support collective bargaining, or reduce administrative bloat, the Chronicle encourages adjuncts to “adapt” and “manage” their conditions. Resilience becomes a substitute for rights. Coping becomes a substitute for reform. The system remains untouched.

The omissions in the Chronicle’s piece are revealing. There is no mention of organizing, even as adjuncts across the country unionize in record numbers. There is no scrutiny of universities’ vast expenditures on athletics, luxury facilities, and administrative expansion. There is no questioning of the billion-dollar endowments that coexist with poverty-level adjunct wages. Instead, the Chronicle defaults to the safest possible narrative: individuals should adjust; institutions should not.

This is not accidental. The Chronicle’s core readership includes the provosts, deans, trustees, and HR architects who built the adjunct system. It is financially and culturally aligned with the sector’s leadership. Its survival depends on not alienating them. That alignment shapes what it chooses to publish — and what it chooses not to. Pieces that counsel adjuncts to quietly endure their exploitation are palatable to the Establishment. Pieces that call out structural injustice are not.

Adjunctification is not an unfortunate side effect of financial pressures. It is a deliberate strategy to reduce labor costs and weaken faculty power. It is part of a decades-long reorganization of higher education around managerial priorities and corporate values. Any article that ignores these realities in favor of “tips” is engaging in misdirection.

In truth, adjuncts don’t need advice on how to “thrive.” They need living wages, multiyear contracts, healthcare, respect, and a seat at the table. They need a labor system that recognizes teaching as the core mission of higher education rather than a cost center to be minimized. They need the kind of systemic change that the Chronicle rarely demands — because demanding it would mean criticizing the very institutions that sustain the Chronicle’s prestige and its business model.

The Chronicle’s soft-pedaled advice is not harmless. It is part of the ideological infrastructure that protects the higher-education status quo. If the sector is ever to become less exploitative, those who report on it must stop reassuring adjuncts that survival is a form of success and start holding institutions accountable for creating the conditions adjuncts are forced to endure.

HEI exists precisely because the mainstream higher-ed press will not.

---

Sources

Erik Ofgang, “How to Thrive as an Adjunct Professor,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 6, 2025.
American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Data Snapshot: Contingent Faculty in US Higher Ed.
Marc Bousquet, How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (NYU Press, 2008).
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges (2017).
Gary Rhoades, “Managed Professionals: Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor” (SUNY Press, 1998).
Claire Goldstene, The Struggle for the Soul of Higher Education (2015).
Devarian Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower (2021).

HEI Resources 2025

[Editor's Note: Please let us know of any additions or corrections.]

Books

• Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.  
  
• Alexander, Bryan (2023).  Universities on Fire. Johns Hopkins Press.  
  
• Angulo, A. (2016). Diploma Mills: How For-profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Apthekar,  Bettina (1966) Big Business and the American University. New Outlook Publishers.  
• Apthekar, Bettina (1969). Higher education and the student rebellion in the United States, 1960-1969 : a bibliography.
  
• Archibald, R. and Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America's Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.
• Armstrong, E. and Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.
• Arum, R. and Roksa, J. (2011). Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press. 
• Baldwin, Davarian (2021). In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. Bold Type Books.  
• Bennett, W. and Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education. Thomas Nelson.
• Berg, I. (1970). "The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs." Praeger.
• Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University.  Princeton University Press. 
  
• Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.
• Best, J. and Best, E. (2014) The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. Atkinson Family Foundation.
Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. Norton.
• Bogue, E. Grady and Aper, Jeffrey.  (2000). Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education: The Evolution of Philosophy and Policy. 
• Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace : The Commercialization of Higher Education.  Princeton University Press. 
  
• Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation. NYU Press.
• Brennan, J & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press. 
• Brint, S., & Karabel, J. The Diverted Dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900–1985. Oxford University Press. (1989).
• Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024) Whiteness in the Ivory Tower: Why Don't We Notice the White Students Sitting Together in the Quad? Teachers College Press.
  
• Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus: Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of "Post-Racial" Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.
  
• Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Princeton University Press.
• Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off?: A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You'll Ever Make. Public Affairs.
• Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.
• Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass: How America's Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission University of Chicago Press.
• Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Collins, Randall. (1979/2019) The Credential Society. Academic Press. Columbia University Press. 
• Cottom, T. (2016). Lower Ed: How For-profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America
• Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? 8th Edition. Routledge.
  
• Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.
• Dorn, Charles. (2017) For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America Cornell University Press.
• Eaton, Charlie.  (2022) Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education. University of Chicago Press.
  
• Eisenmann, Linda. (2006) Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
• Espenshade, T., Walton Radford, A.(2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life. Princeton University Press.
• Faragher, John Mack and Howe, Florence, ed. (1988). Women and Higher Education in American History. Norton.
• Farber, Jerry (1972).  The University of Tomorrowland.  Pocket Books. 
  
• Freeman, Richard B. (1976). The Overeducated American. Academic Press.
• Gaston, P. (2014). Higher Education Accreditation. Stylus.
• Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why It Matters
• Gleason, Philip. Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. Oxford U. Press, 1995.
• Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.
• Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream.
• Graeber, David (2018) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon and Schuster. 
  
Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston. Harvard Press.
• Hamilton, Laura T. and Kelly Nielson (2021) Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities
Hampel, Robert L. (2017). Fast and Curious: A History of Shortcuts in American Education. Rowman & Littlefield.
• Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement
• Keats, John (1965) The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.
  
• Kelchen, R. (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Kezar, A., DePaola, T, and Scott, D. The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. Johns Hopkins Press. 
• Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street: The Transformation of For-profit Higher Education
• Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Crown. 
• Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. Harper Perennial.
  
• Labaree, David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Labaree, David (1997) How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education, Yale University Press.
  
• Lafer, Gordon (2004). The Job Training Charade. Cornell University Press.  
• Loehen, James (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me. The New Press. 
  
• Lohse, Andrew (2014).  Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: A Memoir.  Thomas Dunne Books. 
  
• Lucas, C.J. American higher education: A history. (1994).
• Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Penguin Press.
• Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.
  
• Mandery, Evan (2022) . Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us. New Press. 
  
• Marti, Eduardo (2016). America's Broken Promise: Bridging the Community College Achievement Gap. Excelsior College Press. 
  
• Mettler, Suzanne 'Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. Basic Books. (2014)
• Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.
• Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them.
• Paulsen, M. and J.C. Smart (2001). The Finance of Higher Education: Theory, Research, Policy & Practice.  Agathon Press. 
• Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing. 
• Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.
• Roth, G. (2019) The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility. Pluto Press
• Ruben, Julie. The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality. University Of Chicago Press. (1996).
• Rudolph, F. (1991) The American College and University: A History.
• Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.
  
• Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students.
• Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy. Cornell University Press. 
• Simpson, Christopher (1999). Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War. New Press.
  
• Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education.
• Stein, Sharon (2022). Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education, Johns Hopkins Press. 
• Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Harvard University Press. 
• Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture. 
• Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. The University of Chicago Press. 
• Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. Basic Books
• Taylor, Barret J. and Brendan Cantwell (2019). Unequal Higher Education: Wealth, Status and Student Opportunity. Rutgers University Press.
• Thelin, John R. (2019) A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
• Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy: Unionizing Adjunct Faculty in America. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld. Simon and Schuster.
  
• Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much.
• Veysey Lawrence R. (1965).The emergence of the American university.
• Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education
• Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor. 
• Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure: For-Profit Colleges and the Closing of the Conservative Mind. Cypress House.
• Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities. 
• Winks, Robin (1996). Cloak and Gown:Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961. Yale University Press.
  
• Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.  
• Zaloom, Caitlin (2019).  Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost. Princeton University Press. 
• Zemsky, Robert, Susan Shaman, and Susan Campbell Baldridge (2020). The College Stress Test:Tracking Institutional Futures across a Crowded Market. Johns Hopkins University Press. 

 

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

• Academe Blog
• Adjunct Crisis
• Adjunct Nation
• American Federation of Teachers Adjunct-Contingent Faculty Caucus
• Bryan Alexander (Futurist)
• Campus News (New York)
• Clery Center
• Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor
• College Futures Foundation (California, K-20)
• College is a Risky Business (Thomas B. Walsh)
• College Promise (Free Community College)
• College Tuition Advisory Services (CTAS)
• College Viability App (Gary Stocker)
• Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Faculty
• Confessions of a College Professor (Professor Doom)
• Debt Collective
• Deep Thoughts on Higher Education (Jeff Doyle) 
• Diane Ravitch (K-12)
• EdTrust
  
• Higher Ed Not Debt
• Higher Education Labor United  
  
• Higher Education Strategy Associates
• I Am Ai
• ITT Tech Warriors
• Jim Wolfston and the Social Mobility Index (CollegeNet)
  
• Jonathan Kozol (K-12)
• Kelchen on Education
  
• National Consumer Law Center
• New Faculty Majority (Adjuncts)
• New Laws For America (Bob Hertz)
• Outside the Law School Scam
• Presidents Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration 
• Project on Predatory Student Lending
  
• Randall Collins (Credentialism and Credential Inflation)
• Remaking the University
• Republic Report (David Halperin)
• Saving For College (Mark Kantrowtitz)
• SEIU Faculty Forward (Adjuncts)
• Steve Foerster (Technologist and Educator)
• Strike Debt Portland
• Student Borrower Protection Center
• Student Debt Crisis
• Student Loan Justice
• Terri Givens (Radical Empathy)
• The Best Classroom is the Struggle (Joshua Sooter) 
• TuitionFit (Mark Salisbury)
• Whistleblower Revolution (Heidi Weber)
• Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
• Wrench in the Gears: A Skeptical Parent's Thoughts on Digital Curriculum (K-12)

 College Choice and Career Planning Tools

• Modern States (free college credits)
  
• College Promise
• TuitionFit 
• College Viability App
• College Scorecard (NCES) 
• Washington Monthly College Rankings 
• Apprenticeship Finder (US Department of Labor)
• FinAid
• College Navigator (NCES)
• Best Value Colleges (PayScale)  
• Hechinger Report College Fitness Tracker
  
• NBC News Investigation: Certificate schools are leaving many students in debt and unable to find jobs
• 2/3s of US Employees Regret Their College Degrees (CBS News)
• The Future of Work Won't Be About College Degrees (CNBC, Stepane Kasriel)
• Student Loan Meltdown (Dave Ramsey)
• Permanent Underemployment for College Grads (Burning Glass Technologies)
• College Is A Risky Proposition For The Working Class (Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report)
• Apprenticeships are a trending alternative to college — but there’s a hitch (Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report) 
• 15 Things College Doesn't Teach You
• Best Colleges for Social Mobility (CollegeNet)
• The Case Against Higher Education (Bryan Caplan)
• College May Not Pay Off For Everyone (Liberty Street Economics/NY FED)
• Online Education Has Questionable Outcomes (IHE)
• Colleges Where Most Students Borrow and Few Repay (TICAS)
• Broke, Busted, and Disgusted Trailer (Student Loan Debt)
• The Confusing Information Colleges Provide Students About Financial Aid (The Atlantic)
• College Affordability and Transparency Center (ED)
• Public College Dropout Factories (Third Way)
• Outcomes By Major (NY FED)
• Third Way
• GI Bill Comparison Tool (VA)
• 8 Tips to Help Vets Pick the Right College (Military Times)
• Warrior Scholar (For Veterans)
• Service to School (For Veterans)
• Peer Advisors for Veteran Education (PAVE)

Innovation and Reform

• Faculty Focus
  
• Strategies for Improving Student Success (Inside Higher Education)
• CUNY ASAP 
  
• Gap Year Basics (NYU)
• Union Plus Free College 
  
• Maryland Student Loan Debt Relief Tax Credit
• Canceling Student Loan Debt Would Grow Economy and Add Jobs (Levy Institute)
• Beyond Tuition: Promises for Affordability, Quality, and Accountability in Higher Education (Center for American Progress)
• Georgia State Turnaround (CHE)
• Spelman Health Initiative (IHE)
• University of Kansas: BA In Three Years
• Shady Grove: Nine Campuses in One (WAPO)  
  

Higher Education Policy

• Veterans’ Education Advocates Celebrate Closure of the 90/10 Loophole
• College Transparency Act (Senate Bill 800)
• Dropping Gainful Employment Rules Gives Billions to Subprime Colleges (Inside Higher Education)
• ED Announces Steps to Hold Institutions Accountable for Taxpayer Losses
• FTC Head Says Supreme Court Ruling Puts More Than $2 Billion for Cheated Consumers at Risk (Brent Kendall, WSJ)
• GAO Report Regarding Online Program Managers
• How to Stop Sudden College Closures (Century Foundation)
• Improving Outcomes Data for Online Programs (Robert Kelchen, Inside Higher Education)
• Spelman College Replaces NCAA Sports with Wellness Programs
• Strengthening Rural Anchor Institutions: Federal Policy Solutions for Rural Public Colleges and the Communities They Serve (Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges)
• The Distributional Effects of Student Loan Forgiveness (BFI Working Paper, Sylvain Catherine and Constantine Yannelis)
• The for-profit college system is broken and the Biden administration needs to fix it (Brookings)
• The Impact of a National Program of Free Tuition at Public Community Colleges and Free Tuition for Most Students at Public Four-Year Colleges and Universities on College Enrollments, Graduations, and the Economy (Robert Shapiro and Isaac Yoder)
• Three Things Policymakers Can Do to Protect Online Students (Century Foundation)  
  

Data Sources

• American Association of Colleges and Universities  
  
• American Association of State Colleges and Universities
• American Indian Higher Education Consortium
• Academic Labor Force Trends (AAUP)
• Century Foundation 
  
• Closed Schools Report (US Department of Education)
• College Closing Projections (EY)
• College Costs Increasing Over Time (College Board)
• College Debt Inhibits Home Buying (CNBC)
• Complete College America
  
• Debt by Degrees (Pro Publica)
• Department of Defense
• Education Statistics by Institution
• Enrollment Numbers 
• Excelencia in Education
• Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity
  
• Growing Inland Achievement 
• Hechinger Report
• Heightened Cash Monitoring
• Long-term Student Loan Default Rates
• Lumina Foundation 
  
• National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)
• National Assessment of Educational Progress
  
• National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA)
• National Center for Education Statistics
• NCES Blog
  
• National Student Clearinghouse 
• Predicting College Closures and Financial Distress (Philadelphia Federal Reserve)
  
• School Counselor Numbers (ASCA)
• Scientists Leaving Academia in Droves
• Starving the Beast: The Battle to Disrupt and Reform America’s Public Universities
• State by State College Debt (TICAS)
• Student Loan Debt By State (Urban Institute)
• Student Loan Debt Clock
• Student Loan Debt Inhibits Home Buying (CNBC)
• Student Loan Default Projections (Brookings)
• Subprime Colleges (David Halperin)
• The 74: America's Education News Source
  
• Third Way Reports
• Tracking College Closures (Hechinger Report) 
  
• Transfer Credit Problems (GAO)
• United Negro College Fund
  
• University Business Officers Reports
• US Financial Aid (2024 Annual Report) 
  
• Veterans Affairs (GI Bill)

Trade publications

• Chronicle of Higher Education
• Diverse Issues in Higher Education 
• EdSurge
  
• Higher Ed Dive
• Inside Higher Ed