The Role of U.S. Higher Education in Mass Surveillance: A Cornerstone of Authoritarianism and Fascism

In the digital age, surveillance has become a pervasive aspect of daily life. It reaches far beyond the government’s watchful eye; it infiltrates our personal spaces, our interactions, and even our educational institutions. In the United States, universities and colleges—typically seen as bastions of free thought and intellectual exploration—have, over the years, quietly embraced practices that align more with authoritarian surveillance than the fostering of academic freedom. The result is an unsettling convergence of education, technology, and control that deserves close scrutiny.

The Rise of Mass Surveillance in U.S. Higher Education

Mass surveillance is not a concept confined solely to government agencies or the private sector. U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly adopted surveillance technologies, often in ways that blur the lines between student safety, security, and governmental overreach. The methods used are diverse: from sophisticated digital monitoring of online activity to the installation of cameras throughout campuses, as well as the tracking of students’ movements and behaviors.

On-Campus Surveillance

Many campuses are equipped with thousands of security cameras, often without students' knowledge of the exact extent of their monitoring. These cameras track students' movements around buildings, dorms, and even outdoor spaces. Security personnel, working alongside private contractors, have access to this footage, creating a network of real-time surveillance. Additionally, some universities have partnered with police departments or government entities to share data from campus surveillance, effectively extending the government’s reach into spaces historically seen as separate from state control.

In some instances, universities have utilized facial recognition technology—a tool that, while growing in popularity among law enforcement and private corporations, is still highly controversial due to concerns about privacy, accuracy, and racial biases. Campuses like the University of California, Berkeley, and George Washington University have implemented or explored the use of facial recognition, drawing criticism from civil rights groups who argue that such technologies contribute to surveillance regimes that disproportionately target marginalized communities.

Digital Surveillance: Monitoring Online Activity

In the realm of digital surveillance, universities have also emerged as key players. The rapid digitization of academic spaces has made it easier for educational institutions to monitor and record students' online activities, including emails, internet browsing habits, and even participation in online discussions. These tools, ostensibly designed to protect students from online threats or cheating, can also be used to track the political views or social connections of students and faculty members.

University systems that monitor students' academic behavior are often integrated with third-party services that collect vast amounts of data. Companies like Google, which provide software for research and communication, have been instrumental in creating environments where personal data can be easily harvested and stored. As a result, students and faculty members are under constant scrutiny, even if they are unaware of the depth of data being collected on them.

Off-Campus Surveillance and Law Enforcement

While much of the surveillance happens on university grounds, the cooperation between educational institutions and law enforcement extends far beyond campus boundaries. Many universities share information with federal agencies like the FBI or local police departments, creating a synergy of surveillance that goes beyond the walls of academia. This collaboration is often justified as part of maintaining national security or preventing crimes, but it carries profound implications for privacy and civil liberties.

After the 9/11 attacks, for example, universities in the U.S. were encouraged to collaborate with federal intelligence agencies under the auspices of the USA PATRIOT Act and other anti-terrorism measures. This led to the surveillance of students’ political activities, associations, and even participation in protests. While much of this occurred covertly, the ramifications were far-reaching, particularly for marginalized groups who found themselves disproportionately surveilled due to their activism.

Surveillance of International Students: A First Step Toward Widespread Control

One of the most chilling aspects of surveillance on U.S. campuses is the specific targeting of international students. Historically, international students have been a vulnerable demographic in the context of surveillance and control. This began in earnest post-9/11, when the U.S. government imposed stricter regulations on foreign students, requiring universities to report on students' status, academic performance, and even their physical locations.

The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) was established to track international students in real-time, linking student data to immigration and law enforcement agencies. While this system was presented as a means of ensuring national security, it effectively treated international students as suspects, placing them under heightened scrutiny. Universities, in turn, became instruments of surveillance, forced to comply with federal mandates to report any changes in a student's enrollment status, academic performance, or even the duration of their stay in the U.S.

For international students, this surveillance has been particularly invasive, as their movements—whether related to academic matters or personal lives—are constantly monitored by both their institutions and government entities. The stigma of being under the microscope contributes to a sense of alienation and powerlessness. It also encourages conformity, making it difficult for international students to freely express political or ideological dissent for fear of jeopardizing their academic status or immigration status.

The Threat of TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist

Another troubling element of surveillance within higher education is the growing trend of surveillance outside official university systems. Conservative student groups, particularly Turning Point USA (TPUSA), have taken it upon themselves to monitor and track the activities of professors whose political views they deem “liberal” or “left-wing.” One of TPUSA’s most controversial initiatives has been the creation of the Professor Watchlist, which compiles and publicly names professors accused of engaging in “liberal indoctrination” or promoting “liberal agendas.”

While TPUSA claims the Professor Watchlist is a tool to expose bias in academia, its purpose appears to be less about fostering academic debate and more about intimidating faculty members and curbing academic freedom. Professors listed on the watchlist are often subjected to harassment, threats, and, in some cases, professional repercussions, as conservative groups or donors seek to pressure universities into disciplining or firing faculty. The Watchlist represents a form of extrajudicial surveillance—non-governmental in origin but with highly political aims.

The real danger of such initiatives lies in their ability to undermine the independence of higher education. It is not just the professors listed who are impacted, but the entire academic community. Faculty members may begin to self-censor, avoiding controversial or politically sensitive topics for fear of being targeted, and students may find their ability to engage in free inquiry increasingly stifled.

The Professor Watchlist serves as a reminder that surveillance of academic institutions is not just the work of government agencies or private corporations; it is also deeply politicized, with various ideological groups using the tools of surveillance to exert control over education and the intellectual freedoms that it should represent.

Little Resistance: The Silence of Academia

Despite these troubling developments, resistance within academia has been minimal. Universities, which are supposed to serve as protectors of free speech, intellectual diversity, and civil liberties, have largely failed to challenge the growing surveillance apparatus both on and off their campuses. This silence is not without reason—many academic institutions have willingly participated in these surveillance efforts, citing concerns over campus security, student safety, and the desire to combat terrorism.

Additionally, many students and faculty members have become desensitized to surveillance. A generation raised in the digital age, where privacy is increasingly an afterthought and constant connectivity is the norm, may not fully grasp the implications of mass surveillance. Those who do speak out often find themselves at odds with institutional priorities or are silenced by threats of punishment, surveillance of their own activities, or other forms of retaliation.

The fear of retribution has also led to a chilling effect on dissent. Students who voice political opinions, especially those that challenge the status quo, may find themselves under increased scrutiny. This environment creates a culture where conformity reigns, and open discourse is stifled, not necessarily by overt repression, but by the omnipresent surveillance that discourages any behavior that might be deemed "out of line."

Mass Surveillance as a Tool of Authoritarianism and Fascism

The convergence of surveillance practices on college campuses with broader state interests should not be dismissed as incidental. Throughout history, mass surveillance has been a hallmark of authoritarian and fascist regimes. From Stalinist Russia to Nazi Germany, the power to monitor and control individuals through surveillance has been a tool used by oppressive governments to stifle dissent, control behavior, and consolidate power.

In a fascist regime, surveillance serves not just as a means of security, but as a tool of indoctrination and social control. The existence of surveillance constantly reminds individuals that they are being watched, creating a pervasive sense of fear and self-censorship. The same mechanism is increasingly visible in today’s U.S. higher education system, where students and faculty members may unconsciously internalize the need to comply with institutional norms, which are often shaped by external pressures from governmental and corporate entities.

The Implications for Democracy

The implications of this trend are far-reaching. When educational institutions no longer stand as a safe space for the free exchange of ideas, when they themselves become complicit in the surveillance of their own communities, it erodes the very foundation of democratic society. Free thought and intellectual exploration—the core tenets of higher education—cannot thrive in an atmosphere of constant monitoring and fear.

Mass surveillance on campuses also reinforces systemic inequalities. As surveillance technologies disproportionately affect marginalized groups—whether due to racial profiling, political dissent, or nationality—it contributes to a broader structure of control that undermines the principles of equal treatment and justice. In a society where the surveillance state extends into universities, it’s not hard to imagine a future where academic freedom becomes a thing of the past, with institutions serving instead as instruments of political and corporate control.

Conclusion

The role of U.S. higher education in the rise of mass surveillance—both on and off-campus—raises serious concerns about privacy, freedom, and the future of democratic values. Universities, which once stood as symbols of intellectual autonomy, are now complicit in the surveillance mechanisms that have come to define authoritarian and fascist regimes. The lack of widespread resistance from within academia only exacerbates the situation, highlighting the need for a renewed commitment to the values of free thought and privacy.

If we are to preserve the integrity of higher education as a space for critical thinking and dissent, we must confront the creeping normalization of surveillance in these institutions. It’s time for students, faculty, and administrators to take a stand, not just against the overt surveillance on campus, but against the creeping authoritarianism that it represents in the broader context of our society. The fight for academic freedom and privacy is not just a fight for the rights of students and educators—it’s a fight for the soul of democracy itself.

Moral Capital and Locus of Control

Moral capital has become a contested currency in American public life. It is deployed by political elites to justify austerity, by campus executives to rationalize managerial authority, and by think tanks to discipline the working class. Yet moral capital also rises from below—from students building mutual-aid networks, from adjuncts organizing for fair wages, from communities confronting the harms universities have helped produce. In an era defined by climate peril, surveillance capitalism, and proliferating wars, the stakes of who controls moral capital—and who gets to exercise real agency—have never been higher.

At the center of this struggle lies a fraught psychological and sociological concept: locus of control. Higher education constantly toggles between narratives of internal control (grit, resilience, personal responsibility) and external control (the market, political pressures, funding cycles). Powerful actors encourage an internal locus of control when it shifts blame downward, and an external locus of control when it shields institutional failure. Students, staff, and faculty live suspended in this contradiction, expected to absorb the consequences of decisions made far above them.

Quality of Life as Moral Imperative

Quality of Life—once peripheral to higher education policy—is now a defining moral issue. Students and workers contend with unstable housing, food insecurity, unsafe campuses, inaccessible mental health care, and relentless economic pressures. For many, these burdens are compounded by existential crises: climate anxiety, global conflicts, democratic backsliding, and precarity amplified by technological surveillance.

Institutions often portray these crises as personal challenges requiring self-management. But Quality of Life is not an individual moral failure; it is a metric of collective conditions. When a university community’s quality of life declines, it signals a profound imbalance between agency and structure—a distorted locus of control.

The Industry’s Manufactured Moral Capital

Universities have long crafted narratives that elevate their own moral standing while displacing responsibility onto individuals. The “grateful striver” student, the “self-sacrificing” adjunct, the “visionary” president—these tropes protect managerial systems from scrutiny and allow elites to accumulate moral capital even as Quality of Life deteriorates for everyone else.

This manufactured moral authority collapses under existential pressures. As campuses confront heatwaves, flooding, militarized policing, housing crises, widening wars, and state-sanctioned surveillance, it becomes impossible to sustain the fiction that individuals can simply “grit” their way to stability.

Reclaiming Moral Capital 

Moral capital is not owned by institutions. It can be reimagined, reclaimed, and reoriented. Four longstanding modes of internal discipline—temperance, celibacy, critical thinking, and solidarity—take on new urgency when placed in the context of planetary and political crisis.

Temperance

Temperance, stripped of its historical misuse, becomes a strategy of mindful refusal in the face of consumption-based exploitation. It includes rejecting burnout culture, resisting technological tools that monitor student behavior, and refusing to internalize blame for systemic failures. In an era of climate breakdown, temperance also signifies ecological responsibility—a modest but meaningful form of internal control aligned with global survival rather than institutional convenience.

Celibacy

Broadly interpreted, celibacy represents intentional self-limitation that protects one’s emotional and cognitive bandwidth. Amid surveillance-driven social media, algorithmic manipulation, and institutions that increasingly commodify student identity, celibacy can be a form of psychological sovereignty. It creates space for reflection in a world designed to keep people reactive, distracted, and easily governed.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking remains the academy’s most subversive tradition—especially when deployed against the university itself. It helps students analyze the interplay between personal agency and systemic constraint. It equips them to understand climate injustice, militarism, and the geopolitics of knowledge production. And it exposes the ways mass surveillance—from learning analytics to campus police technologies—erodes autonomy and shifts the locus of control away from individuals and communities toward powerful institutions.

Solidarity

Solidarity transforms private moral commitments into collective action. It breaks the isolation manufactured by surveillance systems, precarity, and competitive academic cultures. Solidarity has historically been the source of the most effective nonviolent strategies—from civil rights sit-ins to anti-war mobilizations to student debt strikes. Today, as geopolitical conflicts escalate and authoritarian tendencies rise, the power of organized nonviolence becomes an existential necessity. It is one of the few tools capable of confronting militarized policing, resisting state repression, and challenging the corporate infrastructures that profit from crisis.

Nonviolent Strategies in an Era of Global Threat

Nonviolent action remains a potent form of moral capital—and one of the most effective forms of collective agency. Research across conflicts shows that sustained, mass-based nonviolent movements often outperform violent struggles, especially against highly resourced opponents. For universities, which increasingly collaborate with defense contractors, data brokers, and state surveillance agencies, nonviolent resistance has become both a safeguard and a moral compass.

Sit-ins, teach-ins, encampments, divestment campaigns, and labor actions reassert external locus of control as something communities can influence—not by force, but by moral clarity, strategic discipline, and the refusal to comply with harmful systems.

Mass Surveillance as a Threat to Moral Agency

Mass surveillance is now woven into the fabric of academic life. Learning management systems track student behavior down to the minute. Proctoring software uses biometrics to police exams. Campus police drones and public-private security networks feed data into law enforcement databases. Administrative dashboards quantify student “risk” and worker “efficiency” in ways that reshape institutional priorities.

This surveillance apparatus corrodes moral capital by reducing human judgment to automated metrics. It also distorts locus of control: individuals are told to take responsibility while being monitored and managed by opaque systems far beyond their influence.

Reclaiming agency requires dismantling or limiting these systems, demanding transparency, and reasserting human dignity in spaces now governed by algorithms.

Toward a More Honest Locus of Control

Moral capital and locus of control are not academic abstractions. They are lived realities shaped by climate disruption, war, inequality, and surveillance. Higher education must stop using moral narratives to deflect responsibility and instead cultivate practices that reinforce real agency: temperance, celibacy, critical thinking, solidarity, and the disciplined power of nonviolent resistance.

In a world marked by existential threats, reclaiming moral capital from below is not simply an intellectual exercise—it is a condition for survival, and a pathway to collective liberation.

Sources
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Erica Chenoweth & Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Astra Taylor, Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone

Artificial Intelligence, Mass Surveillance, and the Quiet Reengineering of Higher Education

The Higher Education Inquirer has approached artificial intelligence not as a speculative future but as a present reality already reshaping higher education. Long before university leaders and consultants embraced Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an abstract promise, HEI was using these tools directly while documenting how they were being embedded into academic institutions. What has become increasingly clear is that AI is not merely an educational technology. It is a structural force accelerating corporatization, automation, and mass surveillance within higher education.

Artificial intelligence enters the university through the language of efficiency and personalization. Administrators speak of innovation, student success, and institutional competitiveness. Yet beneath this language lies a deeper transformation. Teaching, advising, grading, counseling, and evaluation are increasingly reduced to measurable functions rather than human relationships. Once learning is fragmented into functions, it becomes easily automated, monitored, outsourced, and scaled.

This shift has long been visible in for-profit and online institutions, where scripted instruction, learning management systems, predictive analytics, and automated advising have replaced meaningful faculty engagement. What is new is that nonprofit and elite universities are now adopting similar systems, enhanced by powerful AI tools and vast data collection infrastructures. The result is the emergence of the robocollege, an institution optimized for credential production, labor reduction, and data extraction rather than intellectual growth.

Students are told that AI-driven education will prepare them for the future economy. In reality, many are being trained for an economy defined by automation, precarity, and diminished human agency. Rather than empowering students to challenge technological power, institutions increasingly socialize them to adapt to it. Compliance, constant assessment, and algorithmic feedback replace intellectual risk-taking and critical inquiry.

These developments reinforce and intensify inequality. Working-class students, student loan debtors, and marginalized populations are disproportionately enrolled in institutions where AI-mediated education and automated oversight are most aggressively deployed. Meanwhile, elite students continue to receive human mentorship, small seminars, and insulation from constant monitoring. Artificial intelligence thus deepens a two-tier system of higher education, one human and one surveilled.

Mass surveillance is no longer peripheral to higher education. It is central to how AI operates on campus. Predictive analytics flag students as “at risk” before they fail, often without transparency or consent. Proctoring software monitors faces, eye movements, living spaces, and biometric data. Engagement dashboards track clicks, keystrokes, time spent on screens, and behavioral patterns. These systems claim to support learning while normalizing constant observation.

Students are increasingly treated as data subjects rather than citizens in a learning community. Faculty are pressured to comply with opaque systems they did not design and cannot audit. The data harvested through these platforms flows upward to administrators, vendors, private equity-backed education companies, and, in some cases, government and security-linked entities. Higher education becomes a testing ground for surveillance technologies later deployed across workplaces and society at large.

At the top of the academic hierarchy, a small group of elite universities dominates global AI research. These institutions maintain close relationships with Big Tech firms, defense contractors, and venture capital interests. They shape not only innovation but ideology, presenting AI development as inevitable and benevolent while supplying talent and legitimacy to systems of automation, surveillance, and control. Ethics initiatives and AI principles proliferate even as accountability remains elusive.

Cultural warnings about technological obsolescence no longer feel theoretical. Faculty are told to adapt or be replaced by automated systems. Students are told to compete with algorithms while being monitored by them. Administrators frame automation and surveillance as unavoidable. What is absent from these conversations is moral courage. Higher education rarely asks whether it should participate in building systems that render human judgment, privacy, and dignity increasingly expendable.

Artificial intelligence does not have to dehumanize higher education, but resisting that outcome requires choices institutions have largely avoided. It requires valuing human labor over scalability, privacy over control, and education as a public good rather than a data pipeline. It requires democratic governance instead of technocratic management and surveillance by default.

For years, the Higher Education Inquirer has examined artificial intelligence not as a neutral tool or a distant threat, but as a technology shaped by power, profit, and institutional priorities. The future of higher education is not being determined by machines alone. It is being determined by decisions made by university leaders, technology firms, and policymakers who choose surveillance and efficiency over humanity.

The question is no longer whether AI will reshape higher education.
The question is whether higher education will resist becoming a fully surveilled system that trains students to accept a monitored, automated, and diminished future.

---

Sources

Higher Education Inquirer, Robocolleges, Artificial Intelligence, and the Dehumanization of Higher Education

Higher Education Inquirer, AI-Robot Capitalists Will Destroy the Human Economy (Randall Collins)

Higher Education Inquirer, University of Phoenix: Training Folks for Robowork

Higher Education Inquirer, “The Obsolete Man”: A Twilight Zone Warning for the Trump Era and the Age of AI

Higher Education Inquirer, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT Among Top U.S. Universities Driving Global AI Research (Studocu)

Higher Education Inquirer, Tech Titans, Ideologues, and the Future of American Higher Education — 2026 Update

American Christmas 2025

Mass surveillance is no longer a marginal concern in American life. It is the silent architecture of a society managed from above and distrusted from below. The cameras aimed at students, workers, and the precarious class reflect a deeper spiritual, political, and moral crisis among the elites who designed the systems now monitoring the rest of us.

Universities, corporations, city governments, and federal agencies increasingly rely on surveillance tools to manage populations whose economic security has been gutted by the same leaders who now demand behavioral compliance. Cameras proliferate, keystrokes are tracked, movement is logged, and predictive algorithms follow people across campuses, workplaces, and public spaces. Yet those responsible for creating the conditions that justify surveillance—politicians, corporate boards, university trustees, executive donors, and policy consultants—operate in near total opacity. Their meetings take place behind closed doors, their decisions shielded from public scrutiny, their influence networks essentially invisible.

This is not a coincidence. It is the logical extension of a neoliberal elite culture that elevates market logic above moral obligation. As the Higher Education Inquirer documented in “How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis,” the architects of modern austerity—professionalized, credentialed, and trained in elite universities—constructed social systems that demand accountability from the poor while providing impunity for the powerful. Their policy models treat human beings as units to be managed, scored, nudged, and surveilled. Surveillance fits seamlessly into this worldview. It is the managerial substitute for solidarity.

The moral void of this elite class is perhaps most visible in the realm of healthcare. The Affordable Care Act, whatever its limitations, represented a modest attempt to affirm that healthcare is a public good and that access should not depend entirely on wealth. But the undermining of Obamacare under Donald Trump laid bare how deeply the nation’s policy culture had descended into nihilism. Trump’s efforts to gut the ACA were not about ideology or fiscal prudence; they were an expression of power for its own sake. Funding for enrollment outreach was slashed. Navigator programs were dismantled. Work requirements for Medicaid were encouraged, despite overwhelming evidence that they punished the sick and disabled. The administration promoted junk insurance plans that offered no real protection, while lawsuits were advanced to overturn the ACA entirely, even if doing so meant millions would lose coverage.

This assault revealed the moral collapse of a political and economic elite that had grown comfortable with cruelty. It was cruelty performed as policy, sanctioned by corporate donors, embraced by right-wing media, and tolerated by the broader professional class that rarely speaks out unless its own interests are threatened. Even many of the centrist neoliberal policymakers who originally shaped the ACA’s cost-sharing structure responded with timidity, reluctant to confront the underlying truth: that the American healthcare system had become an arena where profit mattered more than survival, and where surveillance of the poor replaced accountability for the rich.

As traditional moral frameworks lose their authority—whether organized religion, civic duty, or shared ethical narratives—many Americans have drifted into agnosticism or atheism not enriched by humanist values, but hollowed out by a sense of futility. Without a shared moral anchor, people retreat into private meaning or abandon meaning altogether. In this void, conspiracy theories flourish. People know they are lied to. They sense power operating behind closed doors. They see elite institutions fail repeatedly without consequence. When institutions offer no transparency, alternatives emerge in the shadows.

The elite response is predictable: condemn conspiracies, scold the public for irrationality, invoke the language of “misinformation.” But this reaction deepens the divide. The same elites who created opaque systems—financial, academic, political, and technological—now fault ordinary people for trying to make sense of the opacity. In a society where truth is managed, measured, branded, and optimized, conspiracy becomes a form of folk epistemology. It is not always correct, but it is often understandable.

Mass surveillance is therefore not the root of the crisis but its mirror. It reflects a ruling class that no longer commands moral authority and a public that no longer trusts the institutions governing it. It reflects a society that treats the vulnerable as suspects and the powerful as untouchable. It reflects a political order in which the dismantling of healthcare protections is permissible while the monitoring of poor people’s bodies, behaviors, and spending is normalized.

If the United States is to escape this downward spiral, the cameras must eventually be turned upward. Transparency must apply not only to individuals but to corporations, boards, agencies, foundations, and the political donors who shape public life. Higher education must cease functioning as a credentialing arm of elite impunity and reclaim its role as a defender of democratic inquiry and human dignity. Public institutions must anchor themselves in ethical commitments that do not depend on religious dogma but arise from the basic principle that every human being deserves respect, security, and care.

Until that reconstruction begins, the nation will remain trapped. The elites will continue to rule through metrics and surveillance rather than legitimacy. The public will continue to oscillate between nihilism and suspicion. And the moral void at the center of American life will continue to widen, one camera at a time.

---

Sources

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
David Lyon, Surveillance Studies
Higher Education Inquirer, How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis
Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos
Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites
Sarah Brayne, Predict and Surveil
Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness

Cybersecurity Threats, Fascism, and Higher Education

American higher education stands at a dangerous crossroads—caught between the encroachment of authoritarian surveillance at home and the very real cybersecurity threats from adversarial states abroad. On one side, we see the growth of data collection and domestic monitoring that risks silencing dissent and undermining academic freedom. On the other, sophisticated cyberattacks from nation-states like Russia, China, Iran, Israel, and North Korea present significant threats to intellectual property, national security, and the safety of digital infrastructure on campus.

This double-edged sword raises urgent questions about the role of higher education in a time of rising fascism, geopolitical instability, and digital vulnerability.

In recent years, colleges and universities have become sites of intensified digital monitoring. Student protesters, faculty activists, and visiting scholars find themselves increasingly under surveillance by both state agencies and private contractors. Under the guise of “safety” and “cybersecurity,” dissident voices—especially those speaking out on issues like Palestine, racial justice, climate collapse, and labor rights—are monitored, flagged, and at times disciplined.

Campus security partnerships with local police and federal agencies like the FBI, DHS, and ICE have created a new surveillance architecture that chills free speech and suppresses organizing. Social media is mined. Emails are monitored. Student groups that once flourished in the open now meet with the paranoia of being watched or labeled as threats. This chilling effect is especially acute for international students and scholars from the Global South, who face disproportionate scrutiny, travel restrictions, and visa denials. These policies don’t just protect against threats—they enforce a top-down political orthodoxy. In some cases, administrators have even turned over data to law enforcement in response to political pressure, lawsuits, or fear of reputational harm. The dream of the university as a bastion of free inquiry is fading in the fog of surveillance capitalism and political fear.

Particularly concerning is the growing role of powerful tech firms like Palantir Technologies in higher education's security infrastructure. Originally developed with backing from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, Palantir’s software is designed for mass data aggregation, predictive policing, and counterinsurgency-style surveillance. While marketed as tools for campus safety and data management, Palantir’s platforms can also be used to monitor student behavior, track political activism, and identify so-called “threats” that align more with ideological dissent than legitimate security concerns. The company has existing contracts with numerous universities and research institutions, embedding itself in the heart of higher ed’s decision-making and information systems with little public accountability.

At the same time, the threat from foreign actors is not imaginary. Russian disinformation campaigns have targeted U.S. universities, attempting to sow discord through social media and exploit political divisions on campus. Iranian state-sponsored hackers have stolen research from American institutions, targeting fields like nuclear science, engineering, and public health. Chinese entities have been accused of both cyberespionage and aggressive recruitment of U.S.-trained researchers through programs like the Thousand Talents Plan, sparking controversy and xenophobic backlash. While some fears have been overstated or politically weaponized, evidence shows that intellectual property theft and cyber intrusion are persistent issues.

Meanwhile, Israel’s cyber industry—including firms founded by former Israeli intelligence operatives—has sold spyware and surveillance tools to governments and corporations worldwide. NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, for instance, has reportedly been used to target academics, journalists, and activists. American campuses are not exempt from these tools’ reach—particularly when it comes to Palestine advocacy and international collaborations.

The paradox is clear: The same institutions that should be defending democratic ideals and global collaboration are being co-opted into both authoritarian domestic surveillance and militarized cyberdefense. There is an alarming convergence of corporate cybersecurity contractors, intelligence agencies, and university bureaucracies—often with little transparency or oversight. Federal funding tied to defense and homeland security has made some universities complicit in this surveillance regime. Others have turned to private cybersecurity vendors like Palantir, which quietly build intrusive systems that blur the lines between threat detection and political policing. In this environment, real cybersecurity is essential—but it must not become a tool for repression.

What is needed is a dual approach that protects against foreign and criminal cyberthreats without succumbing to the authoritarian logic of mass surveillance. Universities must protect academic freedom by enforcing strict policies against political monitoring and reaffirming the rights of students and faculty to speak, organize, and dissent. They must ensure transparency and oversight over cybersecurity operations and external partnerships, particularly those involving military and intelligence-linked firms. They must support digital security for activists and marginalized groups, not just administrative systems. And they must strengthen internal cyberdefenses through open-source tools, decentralized networks, and ethical cybersecurity education—not just corporate solutions that prioritize control over community.

We cannot allow the logic of the Cold War to be reborn in the form of digital McCarthyism. Higher education must be a firewall against fascism—not a pipeline for it. As we confront 21st-century cyberconflicts and political extremism, universities must ask themselves: Are we defending truth and inquiry—or enabling the very systems that undermine them? The answer will shape the future of higher education—and democracy itself.

Beyond the College Meltdown: Moral Decay, Dehumanization, and the Failure of Courage (Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee)

At Higher Education Inquirer, our focus on the college meltdown has always pointed beyond collapsing enrollments, rising tuition, and institutional dysfunction. Higher education has served as a warning signal — a visible manifestation of a far deeper crisis: the moral decay and dehumanization of society, compounded by a profound failure of courage among those with the greatest power and resources.

This concern predates the current moment. Through our earlier work at American Injustice, we chronicled how American institutions steadily abandoned ethical responsibility in favor of profit, prestige, and political convenience. What is happening in higher education today is not an anomaly. It is the predictable outcome of decades of moral retreat by elites who benefit from the system while refusing to challenge its injustices.

Permanent War and the Moral Abdication of Leadership

Wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and Venezuela reveal a world in which human suffering has been normalized and strategically managed rather than confronted. Civilian lives are reduced to abstractions, filtered through geopolitical narratives and sanitized media frames. What is most striking is not only the violence itself, but the ethical cowardice of leadership.

University presidents, policymakers in Washington, and financial and technological elites rarely speak with moral clarity about war and its human costs. Institutions that claim to value human life and critical inquiry remain silent, hedging statements to avoid donor backlash or political scrutiny. The result is not neutrality, but complicity — a tacit acceptance that power matters more than people.

Climate Collapse and the Silence of Those Who Know Better

Climate change represents an existential moral challenge, yet it has been met with astonishing timidity by those most capable of leading. Universities produce the research, model the risks, and educate the future — yet many remain financially entangled with fossil fuel interests and unwilling to confront the implications of their own findings.

Student demands for divestment and climate accountability are often treated as public-relations problems rather than ethical imperatives. University presidents issue vague commitments while continuing business as usual. In Washington, legislation stalls. On Wall Street, climate risk is managed as a portfolio concern rather than a human catastrophe. In Silicon Valley, technological “solutions” are offered in place of systemic change.

This is not ignorance. It is cowardice disguised as pragmatism.

The Suppression of Student Protest and the Fear of Moral Clarity

The moral vacuum at the top becomes most visible when students attempt to fill it. Historically, student movements have pushed institutions toward justice — against segregation, apartheid, and unjust wars. Today, however, student protest is increasingly criminalized.

Peaceful encampments are dismantled. Students are arrested or suspended. Faculty are intimidated. Surveillance tools track dissent. University leaders invoke “safety” and “order” while outsourcing enforcement to police and private security. The message is unmistakable: moral engagement is welcome only when it does not challenge power.

This is not leadership. It is risk aversion elevated to institutional doctrine.

Mass Surveillance and the Bureaucratization of Fear

The expansion of mass surveillance further reflects elite moral failure. From campuses to corporations, human beings are monitored, quantified, and managed. Surveillance is justified as efficiency or security, but its deeper function is control — discouraging dissent, creativity, and ethical risk-taking.

Leaders who claim to champion innovation quietly accept systems that undermine autonomy and erode trust. In higher education, surveillance replaces mentorship; compliance replaces curiosity. A culture of fear takes root where moral courage once should have flourished.

Inequality and the Insulation of Elites from Consequence

Extreme inequality enables this cowardice. Those at the top are shielded from the consequences of their decisions. University presidents collect compensation packages while adjuncts struggle to survive. Wall Street profits from instability it helps create. Silicon Valley builds tools that reshape society without accountability. Washington dithers while communities fracture.

When elites are insulated, ethical standards erode. Moral responsibility becomes optional — something to be invoked rhetorically but avoided in practice.

Social Media, AI, and the Automation of Moral Evasion

Social media and Artificial Intelligence accelerate dehumanization while providing cover for inaction. Platforms reward outrage without responsibility. Algorithms make decisions without accountability. Leaders defer to “systems” and “processes” rather than exercising judgment.

In higher education, AI threatens to further distance leaders from the human consequences of their choices — allowing automation to replace care, metrics to replace wisdom, and efficiency to replace ethics.

The Crisis Beneath the Crisis

The college meltdown is not simply a failure of policy or finance. It is a failure of moral leadership. Those with the most power — university presidents, elected officials, financiers, and technologists — have repeatedly chosen caution over conscience, reputation over responsibility, and silence over truth.

War without moral reckoning. Climate collapse without leadership. Protest without protection. Surveillance without consent. Inequality without accountability.

These are not accidents. They are the results of decisions made — and avoided — by people who know better.

Toward Moral Courage and Rehumanization

Rehumanization begins with courage. It requires leaders willing to risk prestige, funding, and influence in defense of human dignity. Higher education should be a site of ethical leadership, not an echo of elite fear.

This means defending student protest, confronting climate responsibility honestly, rejecting dehumanizing technologies, and placing human well-being above institutional self-preservation. It means leaders speaking plainly about injustice — even when it is inconvenient.

Our concern at Higher Education Inquirer — and long before that, at American Injustice — has always been this: What happens to a society when those with the greatest power lack the courage to use it ethically?

Until that question is confronted, the college meltdown will remain only one visible fracture in a far deeper moral collapse.

Where Public Health Meets National Security: From Susan Monarez to Stanford’s Defense Nexus

In July 2025, Dr. Susan Monarez was confirmed as the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) following a narrow 51–47 Senate vote along party lines. Monarez, who had been serving as acting director since January, brings over two decades of experience in federal health agencies, including leadership roles at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. Her career has also included positions in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Security Council, highlighting the growing intersection of health, technology, and national security.

Monarez’s confirmation occurs amid heightened scrutiny of CDC policies, vaccine skepticism, and substantial budgetary cuts proposed by the Trump administration. With a measles outbreak threatening public health and thousands of CDC positions eliminated or at risk, her leadership will be tested as she navigates the complex web of scientific integrity, political pressure, and resource constraints.

---

Stanford University: Academia and Defense Converge

While Monarez represents a public health leadership deeply entangled with federal policy and security, Stanford University illustrates another side of the U.S. national security ecosystem: the academic and technological pipeline that fuels innovation for defense purposes. In Silicon Valley, Stanford has become a hub where academic research directly informs military and national security projects. Programs like Technology Transfer for Defense (TT4D) accelerate the movement of emerging technologies—ranging from AI and robotics to biotechnology and portable health diagnostics—into practical applications for the Department of Defense.

The Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, established with support from the Office of Naval Research, further exemplifies Stanford’s role in bridging academia and defense. It integrates faculty expertise, student engagement, and Silicon Valley innovation to address pressing national security challenges. Through initiatives like the National Security Innovation Scholars program and Stanford DEFCON Student Network, students are empowered to contribute directly to actionable defense solutions.

Courses such as Hacking for Defense (H4D) demonstrate the university’s commitment to hands-on problem-solving, pairing students with military and intelligence agencies to address real-world national security issues using startup methodologies. Similarly, Stanford’s collaboration with the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School applies AI and machine learning expertise to advance aerospace testing and innovation. These programs reflect a growing trend among Stanford graduates pursuing careers in defense tech, joining companies such as Palantir, Anduril, and Shield AI.

---

The Bio-Surveillance Nexus

As the Trump administration has spent its first few months in The White House constructing the physical and digital infrastructure required for a pre-crime, technocratic police state, little attention has been paid to the ways in which the institutions ostensibly dedicated to “public health” are helping build out this digital control grid. As Unlimited Hangout has been reporting for many years, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a prominent subgroup of the surveillance state has emerged at the intersection of Big Tech, Big Pharma, and the military-industrial complex—one that is laying the groundwork to implement the final frontier of mass surveillance: the bio-surveillance apparatus.

Dr. Monarez’s role at the CDC and Stanford’s defense-oriented research ecosystem exemplify how public health, technology, and national security are increasingly entangled. From AI-driven diagnostics and wearable health monitors to military-backed biomedical research, the convergence of these sectors is creating a powerful, largely invisible infrastructure that extends far beyond conventional healthcare, embedding surveillance, control, and national security capabilities into everyday life.

---

The Bio Surveillance State 

The appointment of Susan Monarez and the rise of Stanford’s defense-academic initiatives illustrate a broader trend: the blurring of boundaries between public health, defense, and technological surveillance. While these programs are publicly framed as innovation and security measures, they also raise critical questions about the expansion of digital and bio-surveillance, the militarization of scientific research, and the role of universities in national security projects.

As the United States navigates public health crises, technological competition, and national security imperatives, these overlapping networks of government, academia, and industry illuminate a critical reality: the future of American innovation, public safety, and civil liberties depends not just on policy or technology alone, but on the careful scrutiny of the bridges between them.

---

Sources:

• Unlimited Hangout: Meet Trump’s CDC Director Susan Monarez

• Reuters: Senate Confirms Trump Nominee Susan Monarez

• ABC News: Senate Confirms CDC Director

• Stanford TT4D

• Gordian Knot Center

• Stanford Hacking for Defense

• SF Standard: Stanford Students Enter Military Tech

How Would Trump's Plans for Mass Deportations Affect US Higher Education?

 

Donald Trump and JD Vance promise to begin mass deportations in 2025 if they win the November 2024 US election. It's a populist idea that has a long history in the US. And it's understandable that many struggling Americans would favor a program that would eliminate from the competition those people who were not born in the US, and came here with or without documents. 

This America First plan would expel about 11 million men, women, and children, break up millions of families and an untold number of communities, and affect not just businesses but entire industries. Deportees would include those who have crossed the borders with Mexico and Canada. But it could also include hundreds of thousands of non-white workers who have had their visas expire for a number of reasons, including temporary unemployment.

Those folks who concerned about these mass deportations should take Trump and Vance's words seriously--and vote accordingly. Struggling citizens who believe they will get better work or have a better life as a result of Trump policies should also consider whether this is true--and also consider all the other structural reasons for their plight--and vote accordingly. Before November, everyone who is voting should also know about the potential effects of these policies for their communities, counties, states, regions, and the nation. 

The Heritage Foundation's 2025 Mandate for Leadership, makes this promise of mass deportations more than a pipe dream. Under a program this radical, we should also expect a backlash on and off college campuses. One that we hope would be nonviolent. Republicans such as Vance have already called professors and universities enemies of the state and of the People, and we should take them at their words.

Foreign relations under a second Trump Administration could also trigger mass surveillance and deportations of students from the People's Republic of China and other nations deemed as enemies. In 2024, Chinese students have already reported being interrogated and deported. 

Plans to deport legally documented persons labeled as enemies or radicals, such as those who protest the horrors in Palestine, or call for global climate action, are also a distinct possibility. 

A Trump-Vance Administration could also restrict named threats from entering and reentering the US, with help from the US Supreme Court, which they have done before. They could reinstitute the Trump "Muslim ban."

And we cannot rule out that a Trump Administration could require federal troops to use force, if necessary, to maintain order on college and university campuses.

Mass deportations of undocumented workers and foreign students would have several significant impacts on colleges and universities and the communities they serve. This includes:

1. Decreased enrollment and diversity: Many undocumented students and foreign students would be forced to leave, reducing overall enrollment numbers and campus diversity.

2. Loss of talent: Deportations would result in the loss of talented students and researchers, including those with college or graduate degrees, negatively impacting academic programs and research output.

3. Financial strain: Universities would lose tuition revenue from deported students, potentially leading to budget cuts and program reductions.

4. Workforce shortages: Higher education institutions rely on both undocumented and foreign workers in various roles. Their deportation would create staffing shortages across academic and support positions.

5. Research and innovation setbacks: The loss of foreign graduate students and researchers would hinder ongoing research projects and slow innovation in STEM fields and other areas.

6. Reduced global competitiveness: US universities may become less attractive to international students, potentially damaging their global rankings and competitiveness.

7. Economic impact on college towns: Many college towns rely on the economic contributions of international and undocumented students. Their removal would affect local businesses and housing markets.

8. Disruption of academic programs: Sudden deportations could disrupt ongoing classes, research projects, and academic collaborations.

9. Brain drain: The forced departure of educated immigrants and students could lead to a "brain drain," with talent and skills leaving the US higher education system.

10. Social and cultural impact: The loss of diverse perspectives from undocumented and international students would diminish the cultural richness and global understanding fostered on campuses.

11. Potential closure of specialized programs: Some niche academic programs that rely heavily on international student enrollment might face closure due to insufficient student numbers.

12. Increased administrative burden: Universities would face additional administrative challenges in complying with and managing the consequences of mass deportation policies.

These impacts highlight the significant role that undocumented workers and foreign students play in the US higher education system, and the potential disruptions that mass deportations could cause across academic, economic, and social dimensions.

Citations:

[1] https://cmsny.org/publications/mass-deportations-impoverish-us-families-create-immense-costs/

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/233150241700500101

[3] https://www.communitypsychology.com/effects-of-deportation-on-families-communities/

[4] https://reason.com/volokh/2024/03/10/mass-deportations-of-immigrants-destroy-more-native-born-american-jobs-than-they-create/

[5] https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/05/21/trumps-plans-for-mass-deportation-would-be-an-economic-disaster/

The Brown University Killing, the Educated Underclass, and the Politics of Control

When a killing becomes associated with an elite institution such as Brown University, the public narrative hardens quickly. The event is framed as an unforeseeable rupture—either the product of individual pathology or evidence that universities have failed to control dangerous people in their midst. Missing from both accounts is a deeper examination of how elite higher education produces an educated underclass, how mental illness is managed rather than treated, how international students are uniquely exposed to risk, and how mass surveillance and reporting regimes increasingly substitute for care.

Elite universities project an image of abundance: intellectual freedom, global opportunity, and moral seriousness. Yet beneath that image lies a population living with chronic insecurity. Graduate students, adjuncts, postdoctoral researchers, and international students occupy a paradoxical position—highly educated, institutionally dependent, and structurally disposable. They are central to the university’s labor model and global prestige, yet peripheral to its safety nets and decision-making structures.

Mental illness must be addressed directly, but not in the reductive way it is often invoked after violence occurs. Campus mental health systems are overwhelmed, under-resourced, and shaped by liability concerns rather than therapeutic commitments. Students in severe psychological distress frequently encounter long waitlists, fragmented care, or administrative responses that blur the line between support and discipline. Crisis is managed, not resolved.

For international students, these failures are magnified. Visa status is typically contingent on continuous enrollment and academic performance. A mental health crisis can threaten not only a student’s education but their legal right to remain in the country. Seeking help may carry perceived—or real—risks: loss of funding, forced leaves of absence, housing instability, or immigration consequences. Cultural stigma, racism, language barriers, and social isolation further discourage engagement with already inadequate systems.

Rather than expanding care, universities have increasingly expanded surveillance. Elite campuses now operate dense ecosystems of monitoring: security cameras, access controls, data analytics, behavioral intervention teams, and anonymous “concerned citizen” tip lines. These systems are justified as preventative safety measures, but they often function as tools of social control. “Concerning behavior” is deliberately undefined, allowing subjective judgments to trigger institutional scrutiny.

Such systems disproportionately affect those who already stand out—students who are foreign, mentally ill, socially isolated, or racially marginalized. For international students in particular, being flagged by a tip or threat assessment process can escalate rapidly, drawing in campus police, local law enforcement, or federal immigration authorities. Surveillance does not replace care; it displaces it.

In the aftermath of violence, political responses tend to reinforce this displacement. Donald Trump’s reactions to campus-related violence and crime have followed a consistent pattern: emphasis on “law and order,” denunciations of universities as irresponsible or ideologically corrupt, and calls for stronger policing, harsher penalties, and increased monitoring. Mental illness is often invoked rhetorically, but rarely accompanied by proposals for expanded treatment, housing stability, or protections for vulnerable students—especially non-citizens.

This framing matters. When elite campus violence is interpreted through a punitive lens, it legitimizes further surveillance, broader reporting mandates, and closer coordination between universities and law enforcement. It shifts responsibility away from institutional structures and onto individuals deemed dangerous or deviant. For foreign students and members of the educated underclass, this environment deepens fear and discourages help-seeking, even as pressure intensifies.

The concept of the educated underclass helps explain why these dynamics are so volatile. Contemporary higher education produces vast numbers of highly trained individuals for a shrinking set of secure positions. International students are recruited aggressively, charged high tuition, and celebrated as evidence of global prestige, yet offered limited pathways to stable employment or belonging. Universities benefit enormously from this arrangement while externalizing its human costs.

None of this excuses violence. Accountability is essential, and the suffering of victims must remain central. But focusing exclusively on individual blame—or on punitive political responses—allows institutions to preserve comforting myths about themselves. It obscures how structural precarity, untreated mental illness, immigration vulnerability, and surveillance-based governance interact in predictable ways.

What incidents connected to elite universities ultimately reveal is not merely individual failure, but institutional contradiction. Universities claim to value diversity while subjecting foreign students to heightened scrutiny. They speak the language of wellness while expanding systems of monitoring and reporting. Political leaders denounce campuses while endorsing the very control mechanisms that exacerbate isolation and distress.

Until universities invest seriously in mental health care, protect international students from cascading penalties, and confront the harms of surveillance-first approaches—and until political leaders move beyond carceral reflexes—elite campuses will remain places where suffering is managed rather than addressed. When that management fails, the consequences can be catastrophic.

---

Sources

American Psychiatric Association. Mental Health in College Students.
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/college-students/mental-health-in-college

Eisenberg, D., et al. “Mental Health and Academic Success in College.” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2009.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books.

Institute of International Education. Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange.
https://opendoorsdata.org

Lipson, S. K., & Eisenberg, D. “Mental Health and Academic Attitudes and Expectations in University Populations.” Journal of Adolescent Health, 2018.

Monahan, Torin. Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity. Rutgers University Press.

Newfield, Christopher. The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them. Johns Hopkins University Press.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. SEVP Guidance for International Students.
https://www.ice.gov/sevis

Trump, Donald J. Public statements and campaign remarks on crime, universities, and law enforcement, 2016–2024.

Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs.

2025 Will Be Wild!

2025 promises to be a disruptive year in higher education and society, not just in DC but across the US. While some now can see two demographic downturns, worsening climate conditions, and a Department of Education in transition, there are other less predictable and lesser-known trends and developments that we hope to cover at the Higher Education Inquirer. 

The Trump Economy

Folks are expecting a booming economy in 2025. Crypto and AI mania, along with tax cuts and deregulation, mean that corporate profits should be enormous. The Roaring 2020s will be historic for the US, just as the 1920s were, with little time and thought spent on long-range issues such as climate change and environmental destruction, economic inequality, or the potential for an economic crash.  

A Pyramid, Two Cliffs, a Wall and a Door  

HEI has been reporting about enrollment declines since 2016.  Smaller numbers of younger people and large numbers of elderly Baby Boomers and their health and disability concerns spell trouble ahead for states who may not consider higher education a priority. We'll have to see how Republican promises for mass deportations turn out, but just the threats to do so could be chaotic. There will also be controversies over the Trump/Musk plan to increase the number of H1B visas.  

The Shakeup at ED

With Linda McMahon at the helm of the Department of Education, we should expect more deregulation, more cuts, and less student loan debt relief. Mike Rounds has introduced a Senate Bill to close ED, but the Bill does not appear likely to pass. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts may take a hit. However, online K12 education, robocolleges, and surviving online program managers could thrive in the short run.   

Student Loan Debt 

Student loan debt is expected to rise again in 2025. After a brief respite from 2020 to late 2024, and some receiving debt forgiveness, untold millions of borrowers will be expected to make payments that they may not be able to afford. How this problem affects an otherwise booming economy has not been receiving much media attention. 

Policies Against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

This semester at highly selective institutions, Black first-year student enrollment dropped by 16.9 percent. At MIT, the percentage of Black students decreased from 15 percent to 5 percent. At Harvard Law School, the number of Black law students has been cut by more than half.  Florida, Texas, Alabama, Iowa and Utah have banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices at public universities. Idaho, Indiana and Kansas have prohibited colleges from requiring diversity statements in hiring and admissions. The resistance so far has been limited.

Failing Schools and Strategic Partnerships 

People should expect more colleges to fail in the coming months and years, with the possibility that the number of closures could accelerate. Small religious schools are particularly vulnerable. Colleges may further privatize their operations to save money and make money in an increasingly competitive market.

Campus Protests and Mass Surveillance

Protests may be limited out of fear of persecution, even if there are a number of legitimate issues to protest, to include human induced climate change, genocide in Palestine, mass deportations, and the resurgence of white supremacy. Things could change if conditions are so extreme that a critical mass is willing to sacrifice. Other issues, such as the growing class war, could bubble up. But mass surveillance and stricter campus policies have been emplaced at elite and name brand schools to reduce the odds of conflict and disruption.

The Legitimization of Robocollege Credentials    

Online higher education has become mainstream despite questions of its efficacy. Billions of dollars will be spent on ads for robocolleges. Religious robocolleges like Liberty University and Grand Canyon University should continue to grow and more traditional religious schools continue to shrink. University of Southern Hampshire, Purdue Global and Arizona Global will continue to enroll folks with limited federal oversight.  Adult students at this point are still willing to take on debt, especially if it leads to job promotions where an advanced credential is needed. 

Apollo Global Management is still working to unload the University of Phoenix. The sale of the school to the Idaho Board of Education or some other state organization remains in question.

AI and Cheating 

AI will continue to affect society, promising to add more jobs and threatening to take others.  One less visible way AI affects society is in academic cheating.  As long as there have been grades and competition, students have cheated.  But now it's become an industry. Even the concept of academic dishonesty has changed over the years. One could argue that cheating has been normalized, as Derek Newton of the Cheat Sheet has chronicled. Academic research can also be mass produced with AI.   

Under the Radar

A number of schools, companies, and related organizations have flown under the radar, but that could change. This includes Maximus and other Student Loan Servicers, Guild Education, EducationDynamics, South University, Ambow Education, National American University, Perdoceo, Devry University, and Adtalem. 

Related links:

Survival of the Fittest

The Coming Boom 

The Roaring 2020s and America's Move to the Right

Austerity and Disruption

Dozens of Religious Schools Under Department of Education Heightened Cash Monitoring

Shall we all pretend we didn't see it coming, again?: higher education, climate change, climate refugees, and climate denial by elites

The US Working-Class Depression: "Let's all pretend we couldn't see it coming."

Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI (Erin Gretzinger, Maggie Hicks, Christa Dutton, and Jasper Smith, Chronicle of Higher Education).