A Syllabus of Resistance

Higher education today demands that we strip away illusions. The university is no longer a sanctuary of truth but a contested battleground of austerity, automation, and alienation. Students, adjuncts, and staff are caught in a cycle of debt, precarity, and surveillance. To resist, we need not another glossy strategic plan but a syllabus — a curriculum of solidarity, transparency, and rehumanization.

Debt defines the student experience. Student loan balances now exceed $1.77 trillion, and repayment programs like PSLF and income-driven repayment offer only partial relief. In 2024, as federal student loan payments resumed after a pandemic pause, millions of borrowers simply refused to pay, transforming individual debt into collective action. The Debt Collective has organized strikes and campaigns to cancel student debt, reframing borrowing as a political issue rather than a private burden. This movement challenges whether the entire financing model of higher education can survive.

Faculty labor is equally precarious. More than seventy percent of instructors are contingent, often earning poverty wages without benefits. At Harrisburg Area Community College, over 200 faculty went on strike in November 2025 after years of stalled negotiations, exemplifying a growing national labor movement against stagnant pay and weakened job security. Adjunct faculty unions at Rutgers and elsewhere continue to push back against layoffs and austerity measures. The crisis of contingent labor has moved from quiet exploitation to open confrontation.

Climate crisis compounds the meltdown. Universities expand globally in a frenzy of collegemania, while ignoring ecological collapse. Student activists demand divestment from fossil fuels, but boards often resist. At Princeton, campaigners uncovered that the university owns a controlling stake in PetroTiger, a fossil fuel company, profiting directly from extraction. Edge Hill University in the UK recently committed to divest from both fossil fuels and border security companies after sustained student pressure. The University of Illinois, despite pledging to divest years ago, still faces protests demanding action. These campaigns show that climate justice is inseparable from educational justice.

Surveillance intensifies alienation. Universities increasingly deploy corporate partnerships and AI tools to monitor student dissent. At the University of Houston, administrators contracted with Dataminr to scrape students’ social media activity during Palestine solidarity protests. Amnesty International has warned that tools like Palantir and Babel Street pose surveillance threats to student activists. Truthout reports that campuses have become laboratories for military-grade surveillance technology, punishing dissent and eroding trust. Education becomes transactional and disciplinary, leaving students reporting higher levels of stress and disconnection.

Resistance must also be moral. University governance remains hierarchical and opaque, resembling corporate boards more than democratic institutions. Calls for transparency and veritas are drowned out by branding campaigns and political capture. A pedagogy of resistance must be rooted in temperance, nonviolence, and solidarity. Rehumanization is the antidote to robostudents, roboworkers, and robocolleges. It is the refusal to be bots, debtors, or disposable labor, and the insistence on reclaiming education as a public good.

Developing a Democratic Syllabus of Resistance

This syllabus is not a catalog of courses but a call to action. Debt strikes, adjunct unionization, climate divestment campaigns, and surveillance pushback are fragments of a larger curriculum of resistance. But this syllabus is incomplete without you. Readers are invited to join in creating it — to add new units, case studies, and strategies that reflect the lived realities of students, workers, and communities.

For inspiration, see the Higher Education Inquirer’s earlier piece on Methods of Student Nonviolent Resistance, which documents the long history of campus activism and the evolving tactics of protest, persuasion, and noncooperation. That archive reminds us that resistance is not only possible but essential.

The classroom is everywhere, and the time is now.

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.

Higher Education Inquirer Resources, Spring 2026

[Editor's note: Please let us know of any corrections, additions, or broken links.  We always welcome your feedback.]  

This list traces how U.S. higher education has been reshaped by neoliberal policies, privatization, and data-driven management, producing deepening inequalities across race and class. The works examine the rise of academic capitalism, growing student debt, corporatization, and the influence of private interests—from for-profit colleges to rankings and surveillance systems. Together, they depict a sector drifting away from its public mission and democratic ideals, while highlighting the structural forces that created today’s crises and the reforms needed to reverse them.

Ahn, Ilsup (2023). The Ethics of Educational Healthcare: Student Debt, Neoliberalism, and Justice. Palgrave Macmillan.
Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.
Alexander, Bryan (2023). Universities on Fire. Johns Hopkins Press.

Alexander, Bryan (2026). Peak Higher Ed. 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. & Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America's Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.

Armstrong, E. & Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.

Arum, R. & 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.

Barr, Andrew & Turner, Sarah (2023). The Labor Market Returns to Higher Education. Oxford University Press.

Bennett, W. & Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It? Thomas Nelson.

Berg, I. (1970). The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs. Praeger.

Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University. Princeton University Press.

Berman, Elizabeth Popp & Stevens, Mitchell (eds.) (2019). The University Under Pressure. Emerald Publishing.

Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.

Berry, J. and Worthen, H. (2021). Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement in Higher Education. Pluto Books.

Best, J. & Best, E. (2014). The Student Loan Mess. Atkinson Family Foundation.

Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism. Norton.

Bogue, E. Grady & Aper, Jeffrey (2000). Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education.

Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace. Princeton University Press.

Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works. NYU Press.

Brennan, J. & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press.

Brint, S. & Karabel, J. (1989). The Diverted Dream. Oxford University Press.

Burawoy, Michael & Mitchell, Katharyne (eds.) (2020). The University, Neoliberalism, and the Politics of Inequality. Routledge.

Burd, Stephen (2024). Lifting the Veil on Enrollment Management: How a Powerful Industry is Limiting Social Mobility in American Higher Education. Harvard Education Press

Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus. Rutgers University Press.

Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024). Whiteness in the Ivory Tower. Teachers College Press.

Cantwell, Brendan & Robertson, Susan (eds.) (2021). Research Handbook on the Politics of Higher Education. Edward Elgar.

Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education. Princeton University Press.

Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off? Public Affairs.

Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.

Cassuto, Leonard (2015). The Graduate School Mess. Harvard University Press.

Caterine, Christopher (2020). Leaving Academia. Princeton Press.

Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass. University of Chicago Press.

Chomsky, Noam (2014). Masters of Mankind. Haymarket Books.

Choudaha, Rahul & de Wit, Hans (eds.) (2019). International Student Recruitment and Mobility. Routledge.

Clay, Kevin (2026). I Guess This Is Activism?: Youth, Political Education, and Free-Market Common Sense. University of Minnesota Press.  

Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education. Jossey-Bass.

Collins, Randall (1979/2019). The Credential Society. Columbia University Press.

Cottom, Tressie McMillan (2016). Lower Ed.

Cottom, Tressie McMillan & Darity, William A. Jr. (eds.) (2018). For-Profit Universities. Routledge.

Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? Routledge.

Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors.

Dorn, Charles (2017). For the Common Good. Cornell University Press.

Eaton, Charlie (2022). Bankers in the Ivory Tower. University of Chicago Press.

Eisenmann, Linda (2006). Higher Education for Women in Postwar America. Johns Hopkins Press.

Espenshade, T. & Walton Radford, A. (2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal. Princeton University Press.

Faragher, John Mack & Howe, Florence (eds.) (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.

Gildersleeve, Ryan Evely & Tierney, William (2017). The Contemporary Landscape of Higher Education. Routledge.

Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty. Oxford University Press.

Giroux, Henry (1983). Theory and Resistance in Education. Bergin and Garvey Press.

Giroux, Henry (2014). Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Haymarket Books.

Giroux, Henry (2022). Pedagogy of Resistance. Bloomsbury Academic.

Gleason, Philip (1995). Contending with Modernity. Oxford University Press.

Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission.

Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price.

Graeber, David (2018). Bullshit Jobs. Simon and Schuster.

Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap. Harvard Press.

Hamilton, Laura T. & Kelly Nielson (2021). Broke.

Hampel, Robert L. (2017). Fast and Curious. Rowman & Littlefield.

Hirschman, Daniel & Berman, Elizabeth Popp (eds.) (2021). The Sociology of Higher Education.

Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University.

Kamenetz, Anya (2006). Generation Debt. Riverhead.

Keats, John (1965). The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.

Kelchen, Robert (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Kezar, A., DePaola, T., & Scott, D. (2019). The Gig Academy. Johns Hopkins Press.

Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street.

Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities. Harper Perennial.

Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation. Crown.

Kraus, Neil (2023). The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement. Temple University Press.

Labaree, David (1997). How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. Yale University Press.

Labaree, David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess. University of Chicago 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. Thomas Dunne Books.

Lucas, C.J. (1994). American Higher Education: A History.

Lukianoff, Greg & Haidt, Jonathan (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind. Penguin Press.

Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.

Mandery, Evan (2022). Poison Ivy. New Press.

Marginson, Simon (2016). The Dream Is Over. University of California Press.

Marti, Eduardo (2016). America's Broken Promise. Excelsior College Press.

Mettler, Suzanne (2014). Degrees of Inequality. Basic Books.

Morris, Dan & Targ, Harry (2023). From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University.

Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.

Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake.

Newfield, Christopher (2023). Metrics-Driven. Johns Hopkins Press.

O’Neil, Cathy (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction. Crown.

Palfrey, John (2020). Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces. MIT Press.

Paulsen, M. & Smart, J.C. (2001). The Finance of Higher Education. Agathon Press.

Piketty, Thomas (2020). Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press.

Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.

Rojstaczer, Stuart (1999). Gone for Good. Oxford University Press.

Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing.

Roth, G. (2019). The Educated Underclass. Pluto Press.

Ruben, Julie (1996). The Making of the Modern University. University of Chicago Press.

Rudolph, F. (1991). The American College and University.

Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.

Schrecker, Ellen (2010). The Lost Soul of Higher Education: New Press.

Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound.

Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth. Cornell University Press.

Simpson, Christopher (1999). Universities and Empire. New Press.

Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step.

Slaughter, Sheila & Rhoades, Gary (2004). Academic Capitalism and the New Economy. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Smyth, John (2017). The Toxic University. Palgrave Macmillan.

Sperber, Murray (2000). Beer and Circus. Holt.

Stein, Sharon (2022). Unsettling the University. Johns Hopkins Press.

Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class. Harvard University Press.

Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me.

Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. University of Chicago Press.

Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Basic Books.

Taylor, Barret J. & Cantwell, Brendan (2019). Unequal Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.

Thelin, John R. (2019). A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.

Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Trow, Martin (1973). Problems in the Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education. Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. 

Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation. Simon and Schuster.

Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree.

Veysey, Lawrence R. (1965). The Emergence of the American University.

Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.

Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid. Anchor.

Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure. Cypress House.

Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy.

Winks, Robin (1996). Cloak and Gown. Yale University Press.

Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.

Zaloom, Caitlin (2019). Indebted. Princeton University Press.

Zemsky, Robert, Shaman, Susan & Baldridge, Susan Campbell (2020). The College Stress Test. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Zuboff, Shoshana (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs. 

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

• Academe Blog
• Adjunct Crisis
• Adjunct Nation
• American Federation of Teachers Adjunct-Contingent Faculty Caucus
• American Scholar
• 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

Forecasting the U.S. College Meltdown: How Higher Education Inquirer’s 2016 Warnings Played Out, 2016–2025 (Glen McGhee)

In December 2016, the Higher Education Inquirer published a set of 18 predictions warning of an ongoing “U.S. College Meltdown.” At the time, these warnings ran counter to the dominant narrative promoted by university leaders, accreditation agencies, Wall Street analysts, and much of the higher education press. College, readers were assured, remained a sound investment. Institutional risks were described as isolated, manageable, or limited to a small number of poorly run schools.

Nearly nine years later, that confidence has collapsed.

A comprehensive review of publicly available data, investigative journalism, court records, and government reports shows that 17 of the Higher Education Inquirer’s 18 predictions—94.4 percent—have been fully or partially confirmed. What was once framed as speculation now reads as an early diagnosis of a system already in advanced decline.

This article is not a victory lap. It is an accounting—of warnings ignored, of structural failures compounded, and of a higher education system reshaped less by learning than by debt, austerity, and financial engineering.

The Growth of Student Debt

In 2016, total student loan debt stood at approximately $1.4 trillion. By 2025, it had surpassed $1.8 trillion, despite repeated claims that the crisis was stabilizing. Millions of borrowers cycled in and out of forbearance, delinquency, and default, often unaware of the long-term consequences of capitalization, interest accrual, and damaged credit.

Temporary relief programs—pandemic pauses, income-driven repayment plans, and selective forgiveness—offered short-term breathing room while failing to address the underlying cost structure of higher education. Legal challenges and administrative reversals further destabilized borrower expectations, reinforcing the sense that student debt had become a permanent feature of American life rather than a transitional burden.

The Higher Education Inquirer warned in 2016 that student loans would increasingly function as a disciplinary mechanism, constraining career choice, delaying family formation, and suppressing economic mobility. That warning has proven prescient.

Graduate Underemployment and the Erosion of the Degree Premium

Another core prediction concerned the labor market. While headline unemployment numbers often appeared strong, the quality of employment deteriorated. By the early 2020s, a majority of recent four-year college graduates were underemployed—working in jobs that did not require a degree or offered limited advancement.

Wages stagnated even as credential requirements rose. Employers demanded more education for the same roles, while offering less stability in return. The result was a generation of graduates caught between rising expectations and diminishing returns.

This shift exposed a contradiction at the heart of the modern university: institutions continued to market degrees as pathways to prosperity, even as internal data increasingly showed that outcomes varied dramatically by institution, major, race, and class.

Enrollment Decline and the Demographic Cliff

The enrollment downturn predicted in 2016 arrived in waves. First came post–Great Recession skepticism. Then demographic decline reduced the number of traditional college-age students. Finally, the pandemic accelerated distrust, remote learning fatigue, and financial strain.

By the mid-2020s, enrollment losses were no longer cyclical. They were structural.

Colleges responded not by rethinking pricing or mission, but by cutting costs. Programs were eliminated, faculty positions left unfilled, and student services hollowed out. In rural and working-class regions, entire communities lost anchor institutions that had served as employers, cultural centers, and pathways to upward mobility.

Institutional Debt, Financialization, and Risk Shifting

One of the most underreported developments has been the rise of institutional debt. Facing declining tuition revenue, many colleges turned to bond markets to finance operations, capital projects, or refinancing. This strategy delayed collapse but increased long-term vulnerability.

The Higher Education Inquirer warned that debt-financed survival strategies would transfer risk downward—onto students through higher tuition, onto staff through layoffs, and onto local governments when institutions failed. That pattern has repeated itself across the country.

Meanwhile, elite universities with massive endowments continued to expand, insulate themselves from risk, and benefit from tax advantages unavailable to less wealthy institutions.

Closures, Mergers, and Asset Stripping

Since 2016, well over one hundred colleges have closed, merged, or been absorbed. Many closures were preceded by years of warning signs: declining enrollment, deferred maintenance, accreditation scrutiny, and emergency fundraising campaigns.

In some cases, institutions sold land, buildings, or entire campuses to survive. In others, boards pursued mergers that preserved branding while eliminating local governance and jobs.

These were not isolated failures. They were the predictable outcome of a system that prioritized growth, prestige, and financial metrics over resilience and public accountability.

The Limits of Reform and the Failure of Oversight

Perhaps the most sobering confirmation of the 2016 analysis is not any single data point, but the broader failure of reform. Despite abundant evidence of harm, regulatory responses remained fragmented and reactive. Accreditation agencies rarely intervened early. Federal enforcement was inconsistent. Media coverage often framed crises as unfortunate anomalies rather than systemic outcomes.

The Higher Education Inquirer argued in 2016 that the greatest risk was not collapse itself, but normalization—the slow acceptance of dysfunction as inevitable. That normalization is now visible in policy debates that treat mass underemployment, lifelong debt, and institutional instability as the cost of doing business.

A Crisis Foretold

The U.S. college meltdown did not arrive as a single dramatic event. It unfolded slowly, unevenly, and predictably—through spreadsheets, bond prospectuses, enrollment dashboards, and borrower accounts.

The accuracy of these forecasts underscores a deeper truth: the crisis was foreseeable. It was documented. It was warned about. What was missing was the willingness to act.

The Higher Education Inquirer published its predictions in 2016 not to provoke fear, but to provoke accountability. Nine years later, the record is clear. The meltdown was not an accident. It was a choice—made repeatedly, by institutions and policymakers who believed the system could absorb unlimited strain.

It could not.

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Sources
LendingTree; EducationData; Inside Higher Ed; Higher Ed Dive; Forbes; NPR; Brookings Institution; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

College Meltdown 2026 (Glen McGhee)

As the United States moves deeper into the 2020s, the College Meltdown is no longer a speculative concept but a structural reality. The crisis touches nearly every part of the system: enrollment, finances, labor, governance, and the perceived value of a college degree itself. The forces fueling this meltdown are not sudden shocks but accumulated pressures — demographic contraction, policy failures, privatization schemes, student debt burdens, and decades of mission drift — that now converge in 2026 with unprecedented intensity.

The Waning of College Mania

For decades, higher education sold an uncomplicated dream: go to college, get ahead, and move securely into the middle class. This college mania was promoted by policymakers, corporate interests, university marketers, and a compliant media ecosystem. But the spell is breaking. Students at elite universities are skipping classes, disillusioned not only by campus turmoil but by the reality that a degree, even from a prestigious institution, no longer guarantees a stable future. Employers increasingly question the value of credentials that have become inflated, inconsistent, and disconnected from workplace needs.

Yet paradoxically, many jobs still require degrees — not because the work demands them, but because credentialing has become a screening mechanism. The U.S. has built a system in which people must spend tens of thousands of dollars for access to a job that may not even require the knowledge their degree supposedly certifies. This contradiction lies at the heart of the meltdown.

Moody’s Confirms the Meltdown: A Negative Outlook for 2026

The financial rot is now too deep to ignore. Moody’s Investors Service recently issued a negative outlook for all of U.S. higher education for FY2026, confirming what researchers, debtors, and frontline faculty have been warning for years. Demographic decline continues to shrink the pool of traditional college-age students, leaving hundreds of institutions with no plausible path to enrollment stability.

Moody’s expects expenses to grow 4.4% in 2026, while revenues will grow only 3.5% — and for small tuition-dependent institutions, revenue growth may fall to 2.5–2.7%. In other words, the business model simply no longer works. Institutions are already turning to hiring freezes, early retirements, shared services, layoffs, and mergers. These austerity strategies hit labor and students hardest while preserving administrative bloat at the top, mirroring broader patterns of inequality across the U.S. economy.

Compounding the problem, federal loan reforms — particularly the elimination or capping of Grad PLUS loans — threaten universities that rely on overpriced master’s programs as revenue engines. Many of these programs were built during the boom years as financial lifelines, not academic commitments. The bottom is falling out of that model too.

[Image: HEI's baseline model shows steady losses between 2026 and 2036. And it could get much worse].  

White-Collar Unemployment and the Broken Value Proposition

A new generation is confronting economic realities that undermine the old promise of higher education. Recent data show that college graduates now make up roughly 25% of all unemployed Americans, a startling indicator of white-collar contraction. The unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree holders rose to 2.8%, up half a point in a year.

If higher education was once treated as an automatic economic escalator, it is now a much riskier gamble — often with a lifetime of debt attached.

Demographic Collapse and Institutional Failures

The so-called “demographic cliff” is no longer a future event; colleges in the Midwest, Northeast, and South are already competing for shrinking numbers of high-school graduates. Some institutions have resorted to predatory recruitment, deceptive marketing, and desperate discounting — the same tactics that fueled the for-profit college boom and collapse.

Meanwhile, the FAFSA disaster, mismanagement at the Department of Education, and the chaos surrounding federal financial aid verification have caused enrollment delays and intensified uncertainty. Institutions like Phoenix Education Partners (PXED) are already trying to shift blame for their own recruitment failures and history of fraud onto the federal government, signaling a new round of accountability evasion reminiscent of the Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech eras.

Student Debt, Inequality, and Loss of Legitimacy

Student debt remains above $1.7 trillion, reshaping the life trajectories of millions and reinforcing racial and class disparities. Black borrowers, first-generation students, and low-income communities bear the heaviest burdens. Many institutions — especially elite medical centers and flagship universities — are simultaneously cash-rich and inequality-producing, perpetuating the dual structure of American higher education: privilege for the few, precarity for the many.

Faculty and staff face their own meltdown. Contingent labor now constitutes the majority of the instructional workforce, while administrators grow more numerous and more insulated from accountability. Shared governance is weakened, academic freedom is eroding, and political interference is rising, particularly in states targeting DEI programs, history curricula, and dissent.

The Road Ahead: Contraction, Consolidation, and Possibility

The College Meltdown will continue in 2026. More closures are coming, especially among small private colleges and underfunded regional publics. Mergers will be framed as “strategic realignments,” but for many communities — especially rural and historically marginalized ones — they will represent the loss of an anchor institution.

Yet contraction also opens space for reimagining. The United States could choose to rebuild higher education around equity, public purpose, and social good, rather than market metrics and debt financing. That would require:

• substantial public reinvestment,

• free or low-cost pathways for essential programs,

• accountability for predatory institutions,

• democratized governance, and

• a commitment to racial and economic justice.

Whether the nation takes this opportunity remains unclear. What is certain is that the system built on college mania, easy credit, and limitless expansion is collapsing — and Moody’s latest warning simply confirms what students, workers, and communities have felt for years.

The College Meltdown is here. And it’s reshaping the future of higher education in America.

Higher Education Inquirer nears 2 million views, with more than 1.5 million in 2025

As 2025 draws to a close, Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is approaching a bittersweet milestone: nearly 2 million total page views since its founding, with more than 1.5 million of those views occurring in 2025 alone. At the same time, HEI will cease operations on January 6, 2026, bringing an end to one of the most independent and critical voices covering higher education in the United States.

The extraordinary growth in readership during 2025 came amid historic disruption across higher education. HEI documented the unraveling of federal oversight, the rise of hyper-deregulation, the expanding reach of for-profit colleges and private equity, and the worsening student debt crisis. These developments drove unprecedented interest from readers seeking analysis that challenged official narratives and corporate messaging.

HEI’s growing audience was fueled not only by comprehensive reporting, but by early warnings that were often ignored by institutions and policymakers. In August 2025, Higher Education Inquirer published a warning about escalating campus violence and political radicalization exactly one month before the Charlie Kirk investigation became public, underscoring the publication’s role as an early-warning system rather than a reactive outlet. That article was part of a broader series examining how extremist politics, lax security, and institutional denial were converging on U.S. campuses.

This foresight extended back further. In early 2024, HEI analyzed Project 2025, highlighting its implications for higher education, civil liberties, and democratic governance. At a time when much of the higher education press treated Project 2025 as speculative, HEI examined its explicit calls for mass deportations, the targeting of immigrants and international students, and the restructuring of federal agencies affecting education, labor, and research. Those warnings now read less like commentary and more like documentation.

HEI’s investigative work extended beyond reporting and analysis. Over the years, the publication submitted dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to federal and state agencies, uncovering critical data about institutional misconduct, federal oversight failures, and the financialization of higher education. These FOIAs often revealed information that universities and regulators preferred to keep hidden, from financial irregularities to internal policy deliberations affecting students and staff.

Labor reporting was another cornerstone of HEI’s mission. The publication highlighted the struggles of underpaid and overworked faculty, staff, and healthcare workers connected to colleges, drawing attention to systemic exploitation across public and private institutions. Similarly, HEI closely tracked borrower defense to repayment claims, scrutinizing how the Department of Education and loan servicers handled student complaints, debt relief applications, and policy reversals—often exposing bureaucratic dysfunction that had direct consequences for tens of thousands of students.

HEI’s editorial record reflects a consistent effort to connect policy blueprints to real-world consequences before those consequences became headline news. Coverage spanned a vast array of topics, including predatory institutions like the University of Phoenix, Trump-era housing policies, climate change, militarization of campuses, labor exploitation, and the privatization of public institutions. Notable published articles from 2025 include:

• The Five Pillars of the College Meltdown (Dec. 15, 2025)

• Kleptocracy, Militarism, Colonialism: A Counterrecruiting Call for Students and Families (Dec. 7, 2025)

• Undervalued, Overworked, Underpaid: The Hidden Struggle of Healthcare Support Workers (Sep. 20, 2025)

• The War on Education: Reclaiming Critical Thought in an Age of Fascism by Henry Giroux (June 9, 2025)

Despite its growing influence, HEI’s independence came at a cost. The publication has never been backed by universities, education corporations, or major foundations. A lawsuit involving Chip Paucek became the final breaking point, imposing substantial legal fees that HEI could not absorb. While the publication stood by its reporting, the emotional toll of prolonged legal conflict made continued operations impossible.

Reaching nearly 2 million views—most of them in a single year—is not merely a metric of success; it is evidence that HEI’s work mattered to a wide and engaged audience. As Higher Education Inquirer prepares to shut down, its legacy remains in the thousands of articles that documented institutional abuse, policy failure, and human cost within higher education.

HEI ends not because its mission was fulfilled, but because the structural forces it scrutinized proved difficult to survive. The readership growth of 2025 suggests that the need for independent, adversarial higher education journalism is greater than ever—even as one of its most persistent voices is forced to fall silent.

The Five Pillars of the College Meltdown

Demographics

The first pillar of the College Meltdown is demographic decline. Following the Great Recession, U.S. birthrates dropped sharply, creating a smaller pipeline of traditional college-age students. Nathan Grawe’s projections and WICHE’s Knocking at the College Door reports point to a steep enrollment cliff between 2025 and 2029, with some regions—particularly the Midwest and Northeast—facing the most severe contractions.

Case Study: Dozens of small private colleges in the Midwest, such as Iowa Wesleyan University (closed in 2023), have already succumbed to shrinking student pools. These closures foreshadow the demographic cliff that will hit hardest in tuition-dependent institutions.

Economics

The second pillar is economic fragility. Tuition and fees have risen faster than inflation and wages, leaving families burdened with debt. Student loan balances now exceed $1.7 trillion, with many graduates trapped in lifetime debt peonage. State disinvestment has shifted costs onto students, while tuition-dependent small colleges and regional universities face existential threats.

Case Study: The collapse of Mount Ida College in Massachusetts (2018) illustrates how tuition-driven institutions can fail suddenly when enrollment drops and debt obligations mount. Similar financial stress has led to mergers, such as the consolidation of Pennsylvania’s state universities.

Integrity (Fraud and Trust)

The third pillar is integrity. Enrollment fraud has become a systemic issue, with ghost students, bots, and synthetic identities siphoning off Pell Grants and other aid. Documented losses exceed $100 million annually, but California officials estimate that nearly a third of applications in 2024 were fraudulent. Fraud not only drains resources but also distorts enrollment data, masking the severity of demographic decline and eroding trust in higher education institutions.

Case Study: California Community Colleges uncovered tens of thousands of fraudulent applications in 2021–2022, with bots and synthetic identities targeting federal aid. This distorted enrollment figures and forced institutions to spend millions on fraud detection systems.

Governance and Labor

The fourth pillar is governance and labor. Higher education has been corporatized, with growing reliance on Online Program Managers (OPMs), outsourcing, and profit-driven models. Faculty labor has been deskilled, with adjuncts and contingent instructors making up the majority of teaching staff. Administrative bloat contrasts with shrinking instructional budgets, and some institutions resemble “robocolleges” with minimal full-time faculty presence.

Case Study: The University of Phoenix, once the largest for-profit college, closed hundreds of campuses and shifted to online models heavily reliant on OPMs. Meanwhile, adjunct faculty at many regional universities report poverty wages and no job security, even as administrative salaries rise.

Culture and Public Trust

The fifth pillar is cultural erosion. Public confidence in higher education has plummeted, dropping from 57 percent in 2015 to just 36 percent in 2024. Skepticism about the value of a degree has grown, with alternatives like certificates, apprenticeships, and direct-to-work pathways gaining traction. Political polarization and media narratives of closures, mergers, and scandals reinforce the perception of a system in meltdown.

Case Study: Gallup polls show declining trust across political and demographic groups. Regional newspapers covering closures of institutions like Green Mountain College (Vermont, 2019) and Becker College (Massachusetts, 2021) amplify public skepticism, reinforcing the narrative that higher education is no longer a safe investment.

The Pillars Weakening 

The College Meltdown is not the result of a single factor but the convergence of demographics, economics, integrity failures, governance issues, and cultural distrust. Each pillar weakens the foundation of higher education, and together they accelerate its unraveling. Case studies from across the country show that the meltdown is not theoretical—it is already happening. Recognizing these interconnected forces is essential if policymakers, educators, and communities hope to address the crisis before the collapse becomes irreversible.

Hyper-Deregulation and the College Meltdown

In March 2025, Studio Enterprise—the online program manager behind South University—published an article titled “A New Era for Higher Education: Embracing Deregulation Amid the DOE’s Transformation.” Written in anticipation of a shifting political landscape, the article framed coming deregulation as an “opportunity” for flexibility and innovation. Studio Enterprise CEO Bryan Newman presented the moment as a chance for institutions and their contractors to do more with fewer federal constraints, implying that regulatory retreat would improve student choice and institutional agility.

What was framed as a strategic easing of oversight has instead arrived as a form of collapse. By late 2025, the U.S. Department of Education has become, in functional terms, a zombie agency—still existing on paper, but stripped of its capacity to regulate, enforce, or even communicate. Consumer protection, accreditation monitoring, program review, financial oversight, and FOIA responses have slowed or stopped entirely. The agency is walking, but no longer awake.

This vacuum has emboldened not only online program managers like Studio Enterprise and giants like 2U, but also a wide array of entities that rely on federal inaction to profit from students. The University of Phoenix—long emblematic of regulatory cat-and-mouse games in the for-profit sector—now faces minimal scrutiny, continuing to recruit aggressively while the federal watchdog sleeps. Elite universities contracting with 2U continue to launch expensive online degrees and certificates whose marketing and outcomes would once have been examined more closely.

Student loan servicers and private lenders have also moved quickly to capitalize on the chaos. Companies like Aidvantage (Maximus), Nelnet, and MOHELA now operate in an environment where enforcement actions, compliance reviews, and borrower complaint investigations have slowed to a near standstill. Servicers once accused of steering borrowers into costly forbearances or mishandling IDR accounts now face fewer barriers and far less public oversight. The dismantling of the Department has also disrupted the small channels borrowers once had for correcting servicing errors or disputing inaccurate records.

Private lenders—including Sallie Mae, Navient, and a growing constellation of fintech-style student loan companies—have seized the opportunity to expand high-interest refinance and private loan products. Without active federal oversight, marketing claims, credit evaluation practices, and default-related consequences have become increasingly opaque. Borrowers with limited financial literacy or unstable incomes are again being targeted with products that resemble the subprime boom of the early 2010s, but with even fewer regulatory guardrails.

Hyper-deregulation has also destabilized the federal loan system itself. Processing backlogs have grown. Borrower defense and closed-school discharge petitions sit in limbo. Decisions are delayed, reversed, or ignored. Automated notices go out while human review has hollowed out entirely. Students struggling with servicer errors find there is no functioning authority to appeal to—not even the already stretched ombudsman’s office, which is now overwhelmed and under-directed.

Across the sector, the same pattern is visible: institutions and corporations functioning without meaningful oversight. OPMs determine academic structures that universities should control. Lead generators push deceptive marketing campaigns with impunity. Universities desperate for enrollment sign long-term revenue-sharing deals without public transparency. Servicers mismanage accounts and communications while borrowers bear the consequences. Private lenders accelerate their expansion into communities least able to withstand financial harm.

Students feel the effect first and most painfully. They face rising costs, misleading claims, aggressive recruitment, and a federal loan system that can no longer assure accuracy or fairness. The collapse of oversight is not theoretical. It manifests in missed payments, lost paperwork, incorrect balances, unresolved appeals, and ballooning debt. For many, there is now no reliable path to recourse.

Studio Enterprise saw deregulation coming. What it left unsaid is that removing federal guardrails does not produce innovation. It produces confusion, predation, and unequal power. Hyper-deregulation rewards those who operate in the shadows—OPMs, for-profit chains, high-fee servicers, and private lenders—while those seeking education and mobility carry the burden.

This moment is not an evolution. It is an abandonment. Higher education is drifting into an environment where profit extraction flourishes while public protection evaporates. Unless new sources of oversight emerge—federal, state, journalistic, or civic—the most vulnerable students will continue to pay the highest price for the disappearance of the referee.

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Sources

Studio Enterprise, A New Era for Higher Education: Embracing Deregulation Amid the DOE’s Transformation (March 2025).
HEI archives on OPMs, for-profit colleges, and regulatory capture (2010–2025).
Public reporting and advocacy analyses on student loan servicers, including Navient, MOHELA, Nelnet, Aidvantage/Maximus, and Sallie Mae (2015–2025).
FOIA request logs, non-responses, and stalled borrower relief cases documented by HEI and partner organizations (2024–2025).
Federal higher education enforcement trends, 2023–2025.

College Mania: The Spell is (Almost) Broken, But Hyper-Credentialism Remains

For decades, America was gripped by college mania, a culturally and structurally manufactured frenzy that elevated higher education to near-mythical importance. Students, families, and society were swept up in the belief that a college degree guaranteed status, financial security, and social validation. This was no mere aspiration; it was a fevered obsession, fueled by marketing, rankings, policy incentives, and social pressure. Today, the spell is breaking, but the demand for credentials persists.

Historically, the term “college mania” dates to the 19th century, when historian Frederick Rudolph used it to describe the fervent founding of colleges in the United States, driven by religious zeal and civic ambition. Over time, the mania evolved. Postwar expansion of higher education through the GI Bill normalized college attendance as a societal expectation. Rankings, elite admissions, and media coverage transformed selective schools into symbols of prestige. By the early 2000s, for-profit colleges exploited the frenzy, aggressively marketing to students while federal and state policy incentivized enrollment growth over meaningful outcomes.

The early 2010s revealed the fragility of this system in what I have described as the College Meltdown: structural dysfunction, declining returns on investment, predatory practices, and neoliberal policy failures exposed the weaknesses behind the hype. At its height, college mania spun students and families into a cycle of aspiration, anxiety, and debt.

Now, even students at the most elite institutions are disengaging. Many do not attend classes, treating lectures as optional, prioritizing networking, internships, or social signaling over actual learning. This demonstrates that the spell of college mania is unraveling: prestige alone no longer guarantees engagement or meaningful educational outcomes. Families are questioning the value of expensive degrees, underemployment is rising, and alternative pathways, including vocational training, apprenticeships, and nontraditional credentials, are gaining recognition.

Yet the paradox remains: for many jobs, credentials are still required. Nursing, engineering, teaching, accounting, and countless professional roles cannot be accessed without degrees. The waning mania does not erase the need for qualifications; it simply exposes how much of the cultural obsession — the anxiety, overpaying, and overworking — was socially manufactured rather than inherently necessary for employment. Students are now forced to navigate this tension: pursuing credentials while seeking value, purpose, and meaningful learning beyond the symbol of the degree itself.

The breaking of the spell is not unique to higher education. History demonstrates that manias — economic, social, or cultural — rise and fall. College mania, once fueled by collective belief and systemic reinforcement, is now unraveling under the weight of its contradictions. Institutions must adapt by emphasizing authentic education rather than prestige, while policymakers can prioritize affordability, accountability, and outcomes. Students, in turn, may pursue paths aligned with practical skills, personal growth, and career readiness rather than chasing symbolic credentials alone.

The era of college mania may be ending, but with the spell broken comes an opportunity. Higher education can be reimagined as a system that serves public good, intellectual development, and genuine opportunity, balancing the need for credentials with the pursuit of meaningful education.

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Sources:

Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (1962).
Frank Bruni, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania (2015).
Dahn Shaulis, Higher Education Inquirer, “College Meltdown and the Manufactured Frenzy” (2011–2025).
Stanford Law Review, Private Universities in the Public Interest (2025).
Higher Education Handbook of Theory & Research, Volume 29 (2024).
Recent reporting on student engagement, class attendance, and labor-market requirements for degrees, 2023–2025.