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

When a killing becomes associated with an elite university such as Brown, 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.

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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.

Pyrrhic Defeat and the Student Loan Portfolio: How a Managed Meltdown Enables Unauthorized Asset Sales

In classical history, a Pyrrhic victory refers to a win so costly that it undermines the very cause it was meant to advance. Less discussed, but increasingly relevant to modern governance, is the inverse strategy: the Pyrrhic defeat. In this model, short-term failure is tolerated—or even cultivated—because it enables outcomes that would otherwise be politically, legally, or institutionally impossible. When applied to public finance, pyrrhic defeat theory helps explain how the apparent collapse of a system can be leveraged to justify radical restructuring, privatization, or liquidation of public assets.

Nowhere is this framework more relevant than in the management of the federal student loan portfolio.

The federal student loan portfolio, totaling roughly $1.6 to $1.7 trillion, is not merely an accounting entry. It is one of the largest consumer credit systems in the world and functions simultaneously as a public policy tool, a long-term revenue stream, a data infrastructure, and a political liability. It shapes who can access higher education, how risk is distributed across generations, and how the federal government exerts leverage over the postsecondary sector. Precisely because of its scale and visibility, the portfolio is uniquely vulnerable to narrative reframing.

That vulnerability was not accidental. It was constructed over decades through a series of policy decisions that stripped borrowers of normal consumer protections while preserving the financial attractiveness of student debt as an asset. Chief among these decisions was the gradual removal of bankruptcy protections for student loans. By rendering student debt effectively nondischargeable except under the narrow and punitive “undue hardship” standard, lawmakers transformed education loans into a uniquely durable financial instrument. Unlike mortgages, credit cards, or medical debt, student loans could follow borrowers for life, enforced through wage garnishment, tax refund seizure, and Social Security offsets.

This transformation made student loans exceptionally attractive for securitization. Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities, or SLABS, flourished precisely because the underlying loans were shielded from traditional credit risk. Investors could rely not on educational outcomes or borrower prosperity, but on the legal certainty that the debt would remain collectible. Even during economic downturns, SLABS were marketed as relatively stable instruments, insulated from the discharge risks that plagued other forms of consumer credit.

Private banks once dominated this market. Sallie Mae, originally a government-sponsored enterprise, became a central player in both originating and securitizing student loans, while Navient emerged as a major servicer and asset manager. Yet as Higher Education Inquirer documented in early 2025, banks ultimately lost control of student lending. Rising defaults, public outrage, state enforcement actions, and mounting evidence of predatory practices made the sector politically radioactive. The federal government stepped in not as a reformer, but as a backstop, absorbing the portfolio and stabilizing a system private finance could no longer manage without reputational and regulatory risk.

That history reveals a recurring pattern. When student lending fails in private hands, it becomes public. When the public system is allowed to fail, it becomes ripe for re-privatization.

A portfolio does not need to collapse to be declared unmanageable. It only needs to appear dysfunctional enough to justify extraordinary intervention.

The post-pandemic repayment restart, persistent servicing failures, legal challenges to income-driven repayment plans, and widespread borrower confusion have all contributed to a growing narrative of systemic breakdown. Servicers such as Maximus, operating under the Aidvantage brand, MOHELA, and others have struggled to process payments accurately, manage forgiveness programs, and provide reliable customer service. These failures are often framed as bureaucratic incompetence rather than as predictable consequences of outsourcing public functions to private contractors whose incentives are misaligned with borrower welfare.

Navient’s exit from federal servicing did not mark a retreat from the student loan ecosystem so much as a repositioning, as it continued to benefit from private loan portfolios and legacy SLABS exposure. Sallie Mae, rebranded and fully privatized, remains deeply embedded in the private student loan market, which continues to rely on the same nondischargeability framework that props up federal lending.

Crucially, these servicing failures cannot be separated from the earlier elimination of bankruptcy as a safety valve. In normal credit markets, distress is resolved through restructuring or discharge. In student lending, distress accumulates. Borrowers remain trapped, servicers remain paid, and policymakers are confronted with a swelling mass of unresolved debt that can be labeled a crisis at any politically convenient moment.

Under pyrrhic defeat theory, such a crisis is not merely tolerated. It is useful.

Once the federal portfolio is framed as broken beyond repair, the range of acceptable solutions expands. What would be politically impossible in a stable system becomes plausible in an emergency. Asset transfers, securitization of federal loans, expansion of SLABS-like instruments backed by government guarantees, or long-term conveyance of servicing and collection rights can be presented as pragmatic fixes rather than ideological choices.

A Trump administration would be particularly well positioned to exploit this dynamic. Skeptical of debt relief, hostile to administrative governance, and ideologically aligned with privatization, such an administration could recast the portfolio as a failed public experiment inherited from predecessors. In that framing, selling or offloading the portfolio is not an abdication of responsibility but an act of fiscal discipline.

Importantly, this need not take the form of an explicit, congressionally authorized sale. Risk can be shifted through securitization. Revenue streams can be monetized. Servicing authority can be extended indefinitely to private firms. Data control can migrate outside public oversight. Over time, these steps amount to de facto privatization, even if the loans remain nominally federal. The infrastructure, incentives, and profits move outward, while the political blame remains with the state.

This is where earlier McKinsey & Company studies reenter the conversation. Long before the current turmoil, McKinsey analyses identified high servicing costs, fragmented contractor oversight, weak borrower segmentation, and low political returns on administrative complexity. While framed as efficiency critiques, these studies implicitly favored market-oriented restructuring. In a crisis environment, such recommendations become blueprints for divestment.

The danger of a pyrrhic defeat strategy is that it delivers a short-term political win at the cost of long-term public capacity. Selling or functionally privatizing the student loan portfolio may improve fiscal optics, but it permanently weakens democratic control over higher education finance. Borrowers, already stripped of bankruptcy protections, lose what remains of public accountability. Policymakers lose leverage over tuition inflation and institutional behavior. The federal government relinquishes a powerful counter-cyclical tool. What remains is a debt regime optimized for extraction, enforced by servicers, securitized for investors, and detached from educational outcomes.

The defeat is real. It is borne by students, families, and future generations. The victory belongs to those who acquire distressed public assets and those who benefit ideologically from shrinking the public sphere.

Pyrrhic defeat theory reminds us that collapse is not always accidental. In the case of the federal student loan portfolio, what appears to be dysfunction or incompetence may instead be strategic surrender: a willingness to let a public system deteriorate so that it can be sold off, securitized, or outsourced under the banner of necessity. If that happens, it will not be remembered as a policy error, but as a deliberate transfer of public wealth and power—made possible by decades of legal engineering that began when bankruptcy protection was taken away and ended with student debt transformed into a permanent financial asset.

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Sources

Higher Education Inquirer. “When Banks Lost Control of Student Loan Lending.” January 2025.
https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/01/when-banks-lost-control-of-student-loan.html

U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid. FY 2024 Annual Agency Performance Report. January 13, 2025.

U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid. Federal Student Loan Portfolio Data and Statistics, various years.

Government Accountability Office. Student Loans: Key Weaknesses in Servicing and Oversight, multiple reports.

Congressional Budget Office. The Federal Student Loan Portfolio: Budgetary Costs and Policy Options.

U.S. Congress. Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 and prior amendments affecting student loan dischargeability.

Pardo, Rafael I., and Michelle R. Lacey. “The Real Student-Loan Scandal: Undue Hardship Discharge Litigation.” American Bankruptcy Law Journal.

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission materials on asset-backed securities and consumer credit markets.

McKinsey & Company. Student Loan Servicing, Portfolio Optimization, and Risk Management Analyses, prepared for federal agencies and financial institutions, 2010s–early 2020s.

Higher Education Inquirer archives on SLABS, servicers, privatization, deregulation, and student loan policy.

NACIQI Elects DEI Opponent as Chair Amid Hyper-Deregulation: What Did You Expect?

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 16, 2025 — In a predictable yet alarming turn, the U.S. Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) elected Jay Greene, a vocal opponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, as its new chair. Greene, formerly of the Heritage Foundation and now director of research at Do No Harm, won a narrow 8-7 re-vote over NACIQI vice chair Zakiya Smith Ellis, who had served as chair in February.

The vote underscores the growing partisanship on NACIQI, a body responsible for reviewing private accrediting agencies that oversee colleges and universities and gatekeep federal student aid. For the first time in NACIQI’s history, members were seated, introduced, and voted along party lines—Senate Democrats in the case of Smith Ellis, and Trump appointees, including Greene, in the other.

Hyper-Deregulation and Systemic Vulnerabilities

Observers and experts see Greene’s leadership as part of a broader pattern of hyper-deregulation that has destabilized U.S. higher education. Decades of advocacy by David Halperin, a longtime attorney and counselor in Washington, have warned of the dangers of allowing accreditation and oversight to be politicized or weakened. Halperin spoke during today’s public comment segment, noting that the administration is pressuring schools to conform to a single ideological agenda—threatening federal funding unless colleges abandon equal opportunity, silence free speech, or police students’ personal identities.

Halperin noted that cuts to staff and regulatory enforcement, combined with the rise of predatory online program managers, for-profit chains, and unregulated private lenders, have created an environment where students bear the brunt of failed oversight.

“Accreditation review should focus on preventing shoddy practices, not protecting abusive companies or advancing a political agenda,” Halperin said. “It should be based on facts, not disinformation; consistent standards, not bias; integrity and independence, not obedience to special interests; and respect for all our children, not bigotry and persecution.”

The Stakes Are High

With Greene now in the chair, NACIQI is considering the renewal application of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which accredits Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and other institutions previously scrutinized by the Trump administration. Experts warn that under hyper-deregulation, politically motivated evaluations could replace the standards and oversight that historically protected students, taxpayers, and educational integrity.

Halperin’s decades of work on accreditation, regulatory oversight, and student protections have long championed transparency and accountability. His comments today serve as a warning: in an era of hyper-deregulation and partisan control, the consequences for students, institutions, and the federal student aid system could be severe.

The Pritzker Paradox: Elite Influence and For‑Profit Exploitation in Higher Education

As the 2028 presidential race accelerates, J.B. Pritzker has emerged as a favored candidate among Democratic power brokers. His public image—competent, pragmatic, socially liberal, and reliably anti-Trump—has been carefully shaped to appeal to voters exhausted by polarization and chaos. But beneath this polished surface lies a deep and troubling contradiction that the public, and especially those affected by the student-debt crisis, cannot afford to ignore. This contradiction, the Pritzker Paradox, stems from the profound dissonance between Pritzker’s public rhetoric about educational opportunity and the private capital networks that have fueled both his family’s wealth and his political ascent.

The Pritzker family has long been intertwined with for-profit higher education and its surrounding ecosystem of lenders, service providers, and private-equity investors. These sectors have collectively played a major role in producing the contemporary student-debt crisis. While J.B. Pritzker often presents himself as a champion of equity, public investment, and educational access, his family’s financial history reveals an alignment with institutions that have extracted billions from low-income students, veterans, and Black and Latino communities through high-cost, low-value educational programs.

This is not simply a matter of past investments. It is part of an ongoing and highly influential political economy in which wealthy Democratic donors, private-equity executives, and education “reformers” operate as a unified class. Central to that class formation is The Vistria Group, a Chicago-based private-equity firm founded by Marty Nesbitt, a close friend of Barack Obama. Vistria stands at the intersection of Democratic power and education profiteering. After the collapse of scandal-ridden chains like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech, Vistria did not step in to dismantle the exploitative for-profit model. Instead, it strategically acquired distressed educational assets and reconstructed them into a new generation of institutions that presented themselves as “nonprofits” while maintaining tuition-driven, debt-laden business models. Former Obama administration officials moved seamlessly into Vistria and related firms, raising serious questions about regulatory capture and revolving-door governance.

Pritzker moves within this same Chicago-centered network. His political donors, associates, and advisers overlap significantly with the circles that built Vistria’s ascent. The structural relationships matter more than any single investment. A Pritzker administration would not exist outside this ecosystem; it would be shaped by it. The question, therefore, is not whether Pritzker personally signed a for-profit acquisition deal but whether the political world that produced him can be trusted to regulate higher education fairly and aggressively. The answer, based on the last twenty years of policy and practice, is no.

This is especially troubling because presidents play a decisive role in higher-education oversight. Through the Department of Education, a president can strengthen or weaken borrower protections, set standards for nonprofit conversions, determine enforcement priorities, and decide whether private-equity extraction will be challenged or quietly accommodated. Millions of borrowers harmed by predatory institutions are currently awaiting relief through borrower defense, income-driven repayment audits, and Gainful Employment rules. The integrity of these processes depends on political leadership that is independent from the private-equity interests that helped create the crisis.

Pritzker’s political style—managerial, technocratic, deeply rooted in elite networks—suggests continuity rather than challenge. The neoliberal framework he embodies does not confront structural inequalities; it manages them. It does not dismantle extractive systems; it attempts to regulate their excesses while leaving their core intact. In higher education, this approach has already failed. It is the reason the for-profit sector was allowed to expand dramatically under both Republican and Democratic administrations. It is why private-equity firms continue to control large segments of the educational marketplace through complex ownership structures and shadow nonprofits. And it is why millions of borrowers remain trapped in debts for degrees that offered little or no economic return.

The Pritzker Paradox is therefore not a story about one wealthy governor. It is a story about the consolidation of political and economic power within a narrow elite that has profited handsomely from the financialization of education while promising, cycle after cycle, to reform the very problems it helped create. Vistria exemplifies this dynamic. The Pritzker family’s history echoes it. And a Pritzker presidency would likely entrench it further.

America needs leadership willing to challenge private-equity influence in higher education, not leadership bound to it. The country needs a president who understands education as a public good, not a marketplace. For borrowers, students, and communities harmed by decades of predatory practices, the stakes could not be higher. The choice before the nation is not simply whether Pritzker is preferable to Trump. It is whether the country will continue to entrust its public institutions to elites who speak the language of equity while advancing the interests of the very networks that undermined educational opportunity in the first place.

Sources
Public reporting on Pritzker family investments in for-profit and education-related sectors; investigations by the Senate HELP Committee, GAO, and CFPB; reporting on The Vistria Group’s acquisitions and nonprofit conversions; analyses of private-equity influence in U.S. higher education; academic literature on neoliberalism and elite capture.

Kleptocracy, Militarism, Colonialism: A Counterrecruiting Call for Students and Families

The United States has long framed itself as a beacon of democracy and upward mobility, yet students stepping onto college campuses in 2025 are inheriting a system that looks less like a healthy republic and more like a sophisticated kleptocracy entwined with militarism, colonial extraction, and digital exploitation. The entanglement of higher education with these forces has deep roots, but its modern shape is especially alarming for those considering military enlistment or ROTC programs as pathways to opportunity. 

The decision to publish on December 7th is deliberate. In 1941, Americans were engaged in a clearly defined struggle against fascism, a moral fight that demanded national sacrifice. The world in 2025 is far murkier. U.S. militarism now often serves corporate profit, global influence, and the security of allied autocracies rather than clear moral or defensive imperatives.

This is an article for students, future students, and the parents who want something better for their children. It is also a call to pause and critically examine the systems asking for young people’s allegiance and labor.

Higher education has become a lucrative extraction point for political and financial elites. Universities now operate as hybrid corporations, prioritizing endowment growth, real-estate expansion, donor influence, and federal cash flows over public service or student welfare. Tuition continues to rise as administrative bloat accelerates. Private equity quietly moves into student housing, online program management, education technology, and even institutional governance. The result is a funnel: taxpayers support institutions; institutions support billionaires; students carry the debt. Meanwhile, federal and state funds flow through universities with minimal oversight, especially through research partnerships with defense contractors and weapons manufacturers. What looks like innovation is often simply public money being laundered into private hands.

For decades, the U.S. military has relied on higher education to supply officers and legitimacy. ROTC programs sit comfortably on campuses while recruiters visit high schools and community colleges with promises of financial aid, job training, and escape from economic insecurity. But the military’s pitch obscures the broader structure. The United States spends more on its military than the next several nations combined, maintaining hundreds of foreign bases and intervening across the globe. American forces are involved, directly or indirectly, in conflicts ranging from Palestine to Venezuela to Ukraine, and through support of allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, often supplying weapons used in devastating campaigns. This is not national defense. It is a permanent war economy, one that treats young Americans as fuel.

At the same time, Russian cybercriminal networks have infiltrated U.S. institutions, targeting critical infrastructure, education networks, and private industry. Reports show that the U.S. government has frequently failed to hold these actors accountable and, in some cases, appears to prioritize intelligence or geopolitical advantage over domestic security, allowing cybercrime to flourish while ordinary Americans bear the consequences. This environment adds another layer of risk for students and families, showing how interconnected digital vulnerabilities are with global power games and domestic exploitation.

For those who enlist hoping to fund an education, the GI Bill frequently underdelivers. For-profit colleges disproportionately target veterans, consuming their benefits with low-quality, high-cost programs. Even public institutions have learned to treat veterans as revenue streams. U.S. universities have always been entwined with colonial projects, from land-grant colleges built on seized Indigenous land to research that supported Cold War interventions and overseas resource extraction. Today these legacies persist in subtler forms. Study-abroad programs and global campuses often mirror corporate imperialism. Research partnerships with authoritarian regimes proceed when profitable. University police departments are increasingly stocked with military-grade equipment, and curricula frequently erase Indigenous, Black, and Global South perspectives unless students actively seek them out. The university presents itself as a space of liberation while quietly reaffirming colonial hierarchies, militarized enforcement of U.S. interests worldwide, and even complicity in digital threats.

For many young people, enlistment is not a choice—it is an economic survival strategy in a country that refuses to guarantee healthcare, housing, or affordable education. Yet the military’s promise of stability is fragile and often deceptive. Students and parents should understand that young Americans are being recruited for geopolitics, not opportunity. Wars in Ukraine, Palestine, and Venezuela, along with arms support to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, rarely protect ordinary citizens—they protect corporations, elites, and global influence. A person’s body and future become government property. ROTC contracts and enlistments are binding in ways that most eighteen-year-olds do not fully understand, and penalties for leaving are severe. Trauma is a predictable outcome, not an anomaly. The military’s mental health crisis, suicide rates, and disability system failures are well documented. Education benefits are conditional and often disappointing. The idea that enlistment is a reliable pathway to college has long been more marketing than truth, especially in a higher-education landscape dominated by predatory schools. Young people deserve more than being used as leverage in someone else’s empire.

A non-militarized route to opportunity requires acknowledging how much talent, energy, and potential is lost to endless war, endless debt, and the growing digital threats that go unaddressed at the highest levels. It requires demanding that federal and state governments invest in free or affordable public higher education, universal healthcare, and stronger civilian service programs rather than military pipelines. Students can resist by refusing enlistment and ROTC recruitment pitches, advocating for demilitarized campuses, supporting labor unions, student governments, and anti-war coalitions, and demanding transparency about university ties to weapons manufacturers, foreign governments, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Parents can resist by rejecting the false choice presented to their children between military service and crippling debt, and by supporting movements pushing for tuition reform, debt cancellation, and public investment in youth.

It is possible to build a higher-education system that serves learning rather than empire, but it will not happen unless students and families refuse to feed the machinery that exploits them. America’s kleptocracy, militarism, colonial legacies, and complicity in global digital crime are deeply embedded in universities and the workforce pipelines that flow through them. Yet young people—and the people who care about them—still hold power in their decisions. Choosing not to enlist, not to sign an ROTC contract, and not to hand over your future to systems that see you as expendable is one form of reclaiming that power. Hope is limited but not lost.

Sources

1. U.S. Department of Defense. Defense Budget Overview Fiscal Year 2025. 2024.

2. Amnesty International. “Saudi Arabia and UAE Arms Transfers and Human Rights Violations.” 2024.

3. Human Rights Watch. “Conflicts in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Palestine.” 2024.

4. FBI and CISA reports on Russian cybercrime and critical infrastructure infiltration. 2023–2025.

5. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). National Cybersecurity Annual Review. 2024.

Pete Hegseth, Authoritarian Drift, and the Shrinking Democratic World: What His Latest Rhetoric Means for Ukraine, Taiwan, Latin America—and for the Manufacturing of a New U.S. War

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s latest comments on US military strategy signal a willingness to concede strategic ground, democratic alignment, and even moral authority to China and Russia. His rhetoric is not isolationism so much as resignation, a public abdication of democratic commitments that authoritarians in Moscow and Beijing have been hoping to hear for years.

In Hegseth’s telling, defending democracy abroad is optional, alliances are burdens rather than assets, and the global contest between democratic and authoritarian systems is someone else’s problem. This shift, echoed by others within his political orbit, effectively clears a path for China and Russia to expand their influence unchecked. It is the kind of rhetorical retreat that changes geopolitical behavior long before any formal policy is announced.

For Ukraine, Hegseth’s posture is devastating. Ukraine is not only fighting for its own survival but also anchoring the principle that borders cannot be erased by force. Every time prominent American voices depict Ukraine as a “distraction” or a “European problem,” the Kremlin hears permission. It emboldens Russia’s belief that with enough pressure and enough delay, Western unity will fracture. When U.S. resolve appears uncertain, Russian aggression becomes more likely, not less.

The implications for Taiwan are even more dire. Taiwan’s security rests partly on deterrence—the sense in Beijing that an attempted invasion would trigger an unpredictable coalition response. Hegseth’s rhetoric eats away at that uncertainty. When influential figures suggest Taiwan is too distant, too complicated, or too costly to defend, they send a clear message to Beijing: Taiwan stands alone. That perception, even if strategic theater, is dangerous enough to destabilize the region. It emboldens Chinese hardliners who believe the U.S. is tired, divided, and ready to cede the Western Pacific. For Taiwanese citizens, the erosion of deterrence threatens to collapse the delicate equilibrium that has preserved their democracy for decades.

The damage is not confined to Eurasia. Latin America—long an arena of soft-power competition—is already shifting toward Chinese and Russian influence. As U.S. leaders telegraph indifference or geopolitical fatigue, Beijing and Moscow expand their economic, security, and technological footprint. Surveillance systems, infrastructure deals with opaque terms, paramilitary cooperation, and coordinated disinformation campaigns fill the vacuum Washington helped create. Countries grappling with inequality and political instability increasingly view China and Russia as stable partners—precisely because the United States appears to be backing away. Hegseth’s rhetoric accelerates this hemispheric reorientation.

China and Russia are also advancing what experts call a “4G war,” leveraging cyber operations to strike at critical infrastructure globally. Power grids, financial networks, transportation systems, and communication backbones are increasingly vulnerable to state-sponsored cyberattacks, which can be executed remotely, anonymously, and at strategic scale. These digital assaults amplify physical geopolitical pressure without conventional troop movements. In a world where the U.S. retreats rhetorically and hesitates militarily, authoritarian cyber campaigns gain a force-multiplying effect: they destabilize economies, undermine public confidence, and signal that authoritarian states can achieve strategic objectives without firing a single shot—while democracies debate whether to respond.

All of this unfolds alongside an unnerving domestic trend: the increasing normalization of deploying the U.S. military inside the United States for political and symbolic ends. The occupation of Washington, D.C., following periods of unrest—an unprecedented show of military force in the nation’s capital—has now become a reference point rather than an aberration. Calls for troops at the southern border have grown louder, more casual, and more openly political. The idea of using active-duty forces for immigration enforcement—long considered a violation of democratic norms—has seeped into mainstream discourse. These domestic deployments do not exist in isolation; they reflect a broader comfort with authoritarian tools at home, even as some political figures argue that defending democracy abroad is unnecessary. It is a worldview that diminishes democracy both outwardly and inwardly.

Compounding these geopolitical and domestic retreats is a disturbing pattern: the willingness of U.S. leaders to manufacture conflict abroad for political gain. In an era when corporate media outlets increasingly avoid stories that challenge concentrated power, The American Prospect continues to do the work journalism was meant to do. Few embody that mission more consistently than David Dayen. His Dayen on TAP newsletters have become essential reading for anyone trying to understand how political decisions intertwine with economic power and democratic fragility.

Dayen’s December 1st dispatch is a masterclass in clarity. While many newsrooms chase horse-race narratives and meme-ready outrage, Dayen focuses on something far more consequential: the construction of a new U.S. war. And disturbingly, it bears the unmistakable imprint of the media-manufactured Spanish-American War—false premises, theatrical moralizing, and elite financial interests waiting eagerly behind the curtain.

The justification being sold to the public is fentanyl trafficking, despite U.S. agencies confirming that fentanyl production in Venezuela is essentially nonexistent. The real audience is a narrow faction of right-wing Venezuelan exiles in South Florida whose political demands have long shaped Senator Marco Rubio’s foreign policy. With an administration drawn to action-based optics and largely unbothered by legality, the machinery of pretextual warfare is already in motion: lethal maritime strikes of dubious legality, deployed carrier groups, unilaterally “closed” airspace, covert operations greenlit, and the political runway being cleared for a possible land invasion.

Hovering over all of this is the unmistakable scent of patronage. The judicial approval of selling Citgo to Elliott Investment Management—Paul Singer’s hedge fund, tightly linked to Rubio’s political ecosystem—raises troubling questions about whose interests are truly being served. Dayen’s reporting suggests a war effort crafted not around national strategy, human rights, or hemispheric stability, but around satisfying a small, wealthy, politically potent constituency.

Yet perhaps the most troubling part of this moment is not only the drift toward authoritarian powers, the normalization of using the military inside the United States, or the manufacturing of new conflicts—but the near-total silence of American universities. Institutions that once prided themselves on fostering democratic discourse, civic literacy, and dissent now largely avoid discussions of foreign policy—particularly when such discussions might anger donors, trustees, or state legislatures. Faculty navigate precarious employment. Administrators fear political retribution. Students, drowning in debt and economic insecurity, have little time or institutional support to engage deeply with global issues. At the very moment when democratic norms are eroding at home and authoritarian influence is expanding abroad, the institutions charged with educating citizens have retreated.

If this trend continues, China and Russia will not simply gain ground. They will redraw the global map. The democratic world will shrink. The consequences will be felt long after the speeches, the staged outrage, and the fundraising cycles have passed. And as U.S. universities remain timid, unwilling or unable to confront collapsing democratic commitments, the vacuum deepens. In a world where silence is interpreted as acquiescence, higher education’s retreat becomes more than a missed opportunity—it becomes complicity.

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Sources

– David Dayen, Dayen on TAP, The American Prospect, December 1, 2025.
– Public statements and broadcasts by Pete Hegseth (2024–2025).
– U.S. Department of State and DoD briefings on Ukraine, Taiwan, and Venezuela.
– DEA and State Department assessments on fentanyl production in Venezuela.
– Court filings relating to the Citgo sale and Elliott Investment Management.
– Reports on PRC and Russian influence in Latin America (CSIS, Wilson Center, academic research).
– Analysis of PRC and Russian cyber operations (“4G war”) on global infrastructure (power grids, transportation, financial systems).
– Congressional statements and policy proposals on U.S. military border enforcement.
– Documentation and analysis of military deployments in Washington, D.C., 2020–2025.

HEI 2025: Over 1.4 Million Annual Page Views From Readers Across the Globe

Over 1.4 million page views from readers across the globe in 2025 reveal a simple but terrifying truth: the promise of a college degree is collapsing before our eyes. Cyber breaches, student debt spirals, for-profit exploitation, and failing oversight have combined to create a system that enriches the few while leaving millions exposed to financial, social, and personal risk. From elite endowments hoarding wealth to underfunded community colleges struggling to survive, higher education is no longer a ladder to opportunity—it is a battleground where power, profit, and policy collide. HEI’s reporting this year has lifted the veil on the forces reshaping American education, revealing a crisis that is urgent, systemic, and global.

Our most-read investigations laid bare a stark reality: a college degree no longer guarantees financial security. Graduates carry crushing debt even as wages stagnate and job markets tighten. Families struggle under the weight of rising costs, while communities confront the fallout of institutions that promise prosperity but deliver instability. The working-class recession is real, and higher education has become both a reflection and a driver of it.

Institutions themselves are showing alarming fragility. The University of Phoenix cyber breach highlighted how even the largest for-profit entities can collapse under operational mismanagement and inadequate oversight. Schools flagged for Heightened Cash Monitoring by the Department of Education illustrate a wider pattern of financial and administrative vulnerability. When governance fails, students suffer, public dollars are jeopardized, and trust in the system erodes.

Profit imperatives have reshaped the very mission of higher education. Fraudulent FAFSA claims, opaque financial practices, and political donations from for-profit entities reveal a sector increasingly beholden to investors and corporate interests. In this bifurcated system, elite universities consolidate wealth while underfunded community colleges, HBCUs, and MSIs struggle to survive. The promise of equal opportunity is under assault, replaced by a marketplace that privileges profit over learning.

HEI has also cast a global lens on these inequities. From Latin America to U.S. territories, higher education is entangled with political power, economic extraction, and social stratification. Internationally, the same forces of exploitation and inequity shape students’ futures, underscoring that the crisis is not merely domestic but systemic and global.

Yet HEI’s work does not end with diagnosis. Solutions are emerging. Federal oversight and transparency must increase, debt relief is imperative, cybersecurity and governance reforms are urgent, and reinvestment in historically underfunded institutions is critical. These measures are necessary to restore integrity and public trust in a system that has long promised more than it delivers.

As we enter 2026, HEI remains committed to relentless investigation and fearless reporting. We will continue to expose failures, hold power accountable, and illuminate both the inequities and the opportunities within higher education. Our 1.4 million page views from readers across the globe in 2025 reflect the urgent need for this work. Higher education is at a crossroads. Informed scrutiny, persistent inquiry, and uncompromising reporting are the only way forward. Hope is limited but not lost. With scrutiny, advocacy, and decisive action, higher education can reclaim its promise as a public good rather than a profit-driven system that leaves millions behind.

Sources and References

Higher Education Inquirer, various articles, 2025. U.S. Department of Education Heightened Cash Monitoring lists, 2025. University of Phoenix cyber breach reports, 2025. Investigations into FAFSA fraud and for-profit college practices, HEI 2025. Global higher education inequality studies, 2025.

The Higher Education Inquirer is requesting all emails from the US Department of Education regarding selling off the student loan portfolio.

 

Cybercrime, Hypocrisy, and the Geopolitics of Blame: Why Russia Isn’t Always the Enemy

In the summer of 2025, the CLOP hacking group—operating from Russia—exploited weaknesses at the University of Phoenix, exposing sensitive data on thousands of students and staff. The breach was devastating, yet Russia was not officially condemned as an adversary.

The contrast with U.S. policy toward countries like Venezuela is striking. Venezuela faces crippling sanctions, economic isolation, and constant political pressure under the banner of protecting democracy and human rights. Meanwhile, Russian-based cybercriminals are allowed to inflict real harm on U.S. institutions with little official pushback. The reason, officials say, is a lack of direct evidence tying these attacks to the Russian state. But the discrepancy reveals a deeper hypocrisy: punitive measures are applied selectively, often based on geopolitical convenience rather than consistent principles.

CLOP-style attacks exploit vulnerabilities in U.S. institutions. Universities, especially those operating on outdated IT systems and under private equity pressures, are frequent targets. Students—many already burdened by debt and systemic inequities—bear the brunt when personal data is exposed. Yet the broader conversation rarely extends to foreign actors who take advantage of these weaknesses or to the structural failures within U.S. education.

Venezuela’s citizens suffer sanctions and economic hardship, while Russian cybercriminals operate from the safety of a country that tolerates them, so long as domestic interests remain untouched. This double standard undermines the credibility of U.S. claims to principled leadership and exposes the uneven moral framework guiding foreign policy.

Higher education becomes a battleground in this selective application of power. Cyberattacks, fraud, and systemic negligence converge to threaten students and faculty, revealing the real victims of international hypocrisy. Protecting U.S. institutions requires acknowledging both the foreign actors who exploit weaknesses and the domestic policies and practices that leave them vulnerable.

The CLOP breach is more than a single incident—it is a reflection of a system that punishes some nations for internal crises while tolerating damage inflicted by others on critical domestic infrastructure. Until U.S. policy addresses both sides of this equation, the cost will continue to fall on the most vulnerable: the students, staff, and faculty caught in the crossfire.

Sources: U.S. Department of Education reports; investigative journalism on CLOP and Russian cybercrime; analyses of U.S.-Venezuela sanctions and policy. 

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.

---

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.

HEI Investigation: FAFSA (Financial Aid) Fraud

26-00780-F  

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting all emails, memos, and meeting notes between FSA leadership and ED leadership from January 2022–present referencing fraudulent FAFSA submissions, identity theft, synthetic identities, or the need for strengthened ID verification. (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/10/2022 To 12/02/2025)

26-00779-F  

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting from the FSA Office of the Chief Information Officer, all security assessments, vulnerability reports, or risk analyses referencing the FAFSA processing system (FPS), identity verification, or bot-driven application spikes from 2020–present. This includes reports about warnings about bots, concerns about insufficient authentication, and breaches or near-breaches that the public never hears about.  (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/10/2020 To 12/02/2025)

26-00777-F  

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is asking for any and all FSA records, reports, data dashboards, spreadsheets, audits, or communications from January 2023–present that track or analyze fraudulent FAFSA submissions, including synthetic identities, ghost students, identity verification failures, or suspected fraud rings. This includes documents prepared for FSA leadership, ED leadership, OMB, or the OIG. (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/01/2023 To 12/02/2025)

26-00732-F  

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting all emails from the US Department of Education regarding selling off the student loan portfolio.   (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/10/2025 To 11/27/2025)

26-00023-F-IG  

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting any and all correspondence between the ED-OIG and the University of Phoenix regarding unusual or suspicious FAFSA applications from 1/1/2020 and 11/26/2025 (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/01/2020 To 11/26/2025)

26-00709-F  

The Higher Education Inquirer is requesting any and all email correspondence between the US Department of Education and the Thompson Coburn Law Firm from January 6, 2025 to November 24, 2025.  We are particularly interested in the following areas related to higher education:
Gainful Employment
Bare Minimum Rule
Borrower Defense to Repayment
Student Loan Forgiveness
Title IX
False Claims Act
Federal Funding Freeze Litigation
DEI Executive Orders Litigation, the Dear Colleague Letter Litigation, and DOJ’s July 2025 Guidance on Unlawful Discrimination
Executive Order 14242 Directing the Closure of ED
Grant Termination
Rate Cap Policy Litigation
Student and Exchange Visitor Program Litigation
Legality of Nationwide Injunctions
Program Participation Agreement Signatory Litigation (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/06/2025 To 11/24/2025)

26-00697-F

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting any and all correspondence pertaining to "unusual" or "suspicious" activity regarding FAFSA applications involving the University of Phoenix.  Phoenix Education Partners CEO Chris Lynne has recently acknowledged this issue.   (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/01/2024 To 11/23/2025)

26-00697-F

26-00697-F

He Helped Run Some of the Worst For-Profit Colleges. The Trump Team Just Picked Him to Oversee College Quality. (David Halperin)

On the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, when most people are focused on travel plans and food preparation, the Trump administration released a list of its four nominees for open slots on the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI). That is the panel of outside experts that advises the U.S. Department of Education on whether to approve or reject the accrediting bodies that serve as gatekeepers for federal student financial aid. Amid five candidates picked by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon — representatives from conservative think tanks and universities, and a student member — one name stands out: Robert Eitel, a senior education department official in the first Trump administration, and before that — which the Department’s press release does not mention at all — a senior executive at two of the most deceptive and abusive companies in the history of U.S. for-profit higher education.

Eitel, who had served as the Department of Education’s deputy general counsel during the George W. Bush administration, joined Career Education Corporation (CEC) in 2013 as a vice president of regulatory operations. In 2015, Eitel left CEC to join Bridgepoint Education as vice president of regulatory legal services. He remained in that role through April 2017, the last three months on leave of absence while serving as an advisor to Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Eitel then resigned from Bridgepoint and was senior counsel to DeVos through Trump’s first term.

The first of Eitel’s corporate employers, Career Education Corp., which changed its name in 2020 to Perdoceo, has faced multiple law enforcement investigations for predatory conduct.

In 2013, soon after Eitel joined CEC, the company agreed to a $10.25 million settlement with the New York state attorney general over charges that it had exaggerated job placement rates for graduates of its schools.

In 2019, after Eitel’s departure, the company entered into a $494 million settlement with 48 state attorneys general, plus the District of Columbia, over an investigation, launched in 2014, that for years it had engaged in widespread deceptive practices against students.

Later that same year, Perdoceo agreed to pay $30 million to settle charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission that its schools, at least since 2012, had recruited students through deceptive third-party lead generation operations.

In each case, the company did not admit guilt.

Misconduct at CEC/Perdoceo continued well past Eitel’s departure, suggesting the rot at the company’s core. In this decade, Perdoceo employees told media outlets USA Today and Capitol Forum, as well as Republic Report, that company recruiters have continued to feel pressure to make misleading sales pitches and to enroll low-income people into programs that aren’t strong enough to help them succeed. Some of those former employees also spoke with federal investigators. USA Today reported in 2022 that the U.S. Department of Education, in December 2021, requested information from Perdoceo; the Department also asked Perdoceo to retain records regarding student recruiting, marketing, financial aid practices, and more. Perdoceo confirmed the probe, while seeming to minimize its significance, in a February 2022 SEC filing. Perdoceo also acknowledged in May 2022 that it received a request for documents and information from the U.S. Justice Department.

The Department of Education has provided CEC/Perdoceo schools — with current brand names including American Intercontinental University and Colorado Technical University and demised brands including Brooks Institute and Sanford-Brown College — with billions of dollars over the years. American Intercontinental University and Colorado Technical University have at times received as much as 97 percent of their revenue from taxpayer dollars in the form of federal student grants and loans.

But data released by the Department in 2023 showed that the Perdoceo schools deliver poor results for students, with low graduation rates and graduate incomes and high levels of student debt.

Meanwhile, the company Eitel left CEC to join, Bridgepoint Education, compiled its own record of predatory abuses. At a 2011 investigative hearing, then-Senate HELP committee chair Tom Harkin (D-IA) called Bridgepoint’s main school, Ashford University, “an absolute scam”; the hearing highlighted the company’s deceptive advertising, predatory recruiting, high prices, and weak educational offerings. Bridgepoint used false promises to purchase in 2005 a small college in Iowa and used that school’s accreditation to build a giant, mostly online school whose attendance peaked in 2012 at around 77,000 students and received billions from taxpayers.

Bridgepoint/Ashford deceived, crushed the dreams of, and buried in debt veterans, single moms, and others across the country, and put the company in jeopardy with law enforcement multiple times. In 2022, justice finally caught up with the company, which by that time had changed its name to Zovio. Following a trial where the California attorney general’s office presented extensive evidence of deceptive practices by the school, a state judge ruled that the company “violated the law by giving students false or misleading information about career outcomes, cost and financial aid, pace of degree programs, and transfer credits, in order to entice them to enroll at Ashford.” An appeals court subsequently upheld the verdict.

Zovio tried to launder its bad reputation by selling Ashford in 2020 to the public University of Arizona, while maintaining a lucrative service contract to run the school. After the California verdict, Zovio was pushed out of the deal, and the troubled school operation was folded into U. of Arizona, creating more controversy and turmoil at that school; the deceptive practices have continued.

After his revolving door journey through the Department of Education, two predatory college companies, and back to a Trump education department that repeatedly used its regulatory and enforcement powers to make it easier for predatory schools to prosper, Robert Eitel co-founded and became president of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a well-funded think tank dedicated at its outset to fighting the Biden administration’s education agenda through lawsuits and “vigorous oversight” of the regulatory process and advocating for public money for religious schools. It also has aggressively opposed the rights of transgender students.

In July, the Trump administration, in another effort to bulldoze laws and norms to get the personnel it wants, declared after the fact that the appointment earlier this year of Zakiya Smith Ellis, a Democratic appointee, as chair of NACIQI was “erroneous.” Accordingly, as far as the Trump administration is concerned, NACIQI currently has no chair. Don’t be surprised if, at the next NACIQI meeting, set for December 16, Trump officials maneuver to make Bob Eitel, a former top executive of some of the worst colleges in America, the head of the committee that is supposed to guard against college failures and abuses. Responsible NACIQI members should pick someone else as chair.

David Halperin
Attorney and Counselor
Washington, DC

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]

Medugrift and the price makers in higher education

In the United States, the cost of higher education is not a natural phenomenon. It is deliberately constructed by a network of institutional actors who function as price makers: university presidents, chief financial officers, boards of trustees, governors, and state legislators. They determine what students pay, how institutions are structured, and whose interests higher education ultimately serves. Their decisions shape tuition, labor conditions, program priorities, and the balance between education and the expanding world of medugrift—the hybrid system where medicine, education, debt, and corporate extraction intersect.

For decades, the American public has been told that tuition rises because education is inherently expensive. But as Richard Wolff argues in his critiques of the “War on the Working Class,” the economic decisions shaping tuition, labor costs, athletics, administrative growth, and capital projects reflect class priorities. The price makers choose which costs are fundamental and which are negotiable. They choose what gets built, who gets hired, and how much debt institutions take on. They choose who pays.

University presidents now act more like corporate executives than academic leaders. They negotiate seven-figure salaries, travel globally for fundraising, and preside over campuses where luxury construction often outruns academic needs. They approve budgets that elevate branding and athletics while pressuring academic departments to justify their existence through profit metrics. Tuition increases rarely slow presidential compensation; instead, they are framed as regrettable necessities dictated by “the market” or “competitive realities.”

CFOs enforce a financial logic that prioritizes credit ratings, cash reserves, and debt-financed expansion. They present budgets as neutral, but each line reflects a hierarchy of value. Instruction is cast as a cost center. Staff health care, faculty benefits, and student services become “inefficiencies.” Meanwhile, massive expenditures on consultants, real estate, information systems, and administration are justified as essential to “modernization.” The result is predictable: the people who teach and learn bear the burden while those who administer expand.

Trustees represent another layer of price making. Often drawn from banking, private equity, real estate, biotech, and corporate medicine, trustees bring a worldview shaped by capital accumulation rather than public service. They authorize tuition hikes, approve investment strategies, and greenlight partnerships that blend public education with private profit. Many trustees sit simultaneously on hospital boards or medical investment firms, allowing medugrift to flourish in the shadows of institutional legitimacy. Their decisions shape which programs expand, which shrink, and which students are offered genuine opportunity.

State governors and legislators are external architects of scarcity. Since the 1980s, state governments have systematically defunded public higher education while channeling resources to mass incarceration, gambling revenue schemes, corporate tax breaks, and subsidies to companies like Amazon. These choices undermine the ability of public institutions to remain affordable and force them to operate increasingly like private universities. The shift from public funding to tuition revenue is not inevitable; it is a political strategy. HBCUs and tribal colleges have lived with this manufactured scarcity for generations. Their chronic underfunding—documented in numerous state audits and federal investigations—illustrates what happens when government treats education for marginalized communities as optional.

The emergence of medugrift reveals a deeper structural problem. At the intersection of higher education and corporate medicine sits an engine of extraction. University medical systems leverage public funding, student tuition, and philanthropic contributions to build financial empires that often serve administrators first and communities last. Medical schools charge extreme tuition while placing students into debt-heavy paths. University hospitals consolidate regional health systems, increasing costs while reducing access. Research produced through public dollars is routinely captured by private pharmaceutical or biotech companies. Meanwhile, residents and faculty in these health systems often endure poor working conditions and stagnant pay. Medugrift conceals itself behind the prestige of medicine, but its logic mirrors that of predatory education: privatize gains, socialize losses, and extract from those with the least bargaining power.

Who determines the costs to students? The answer lies in the aggregated decisions of these actors. When a university raises tuition to protect its bond rating, that is a decision. When trustees invest in athletics while cutting humanities programs, that is a decision. When governors choose prisons over scholarships, that is a decision. When state legislatures allow gambling revenue to substitute for stable taxation, that is a decision. Each choice shifts the financial burden downward while consolidating power upward.

This is not simply mismanagement; it is a class project. The people who determine prices do not feel them. Students, families, adjunct instructors, and underfunded communities do. For working-class students, particularly those from historically excluded backgrounds, the price makers have built a system defined by debt, precarity, and limited mobility.

Nothing about this system is inevitable. There was a time when public universities were affordable, when trustees included community members and labor leaders, when presidents were educators, and when medical centers served the public rather than corporate conglomerates. If the price makers can build this system, a more democratic and humane system can be built to replace it.

The question for the coming decade is not whether higher education is too expensive. The public has already reached its verdict. The question is whether students, workers, and communities will continue to let the price makers—and the medugrift machinery attached to them—define who gets educated, who gets indebted, and who gets left behind.

Sources
Richard D. Wolff, Understanding Socialism; Capitalism Hits the Fan
Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness
Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid
Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul
State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) Reports
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, HBCU Funding Analyses

The Hidden Costs of ROTC — and the Military Path: Why Prospective Enlistees and Supporters Should Think Twice

[Editor's note: This article was written before West Virginia National Guard troops were shot upon in the occupied District of Columbia. That horrific event makes our point even more salient. No matter how desperate someone may be, we implore folks to think twice before signing anything related to military service under the Trump Administration.] 

For many young Americans, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) or other military‑linked opportunities can look like a ticket to education, steady income, and a chance to “see the world.” But the allure of scholarships, structure, and economic opportunity often hides a deeper reality — one that includes moral danger, personal risk, and long-term uncertainty.

Recent events underscore this. On November 24, 2025, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) announced it was opening a formal investigation into Mark Kelly — retired Navy captain, former astronaut, and current U.S. Senator — after he appeared in a video alongside other lawmakers urging U.S. troops to disobey “illegal orders.” The DoD’s justification: as a retired officer, Kelly remains subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and the department said his statements may have “interfered with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”

This episode is striking not only because of Kelly’s prominence, but because it shows how even after leaving active service, a veteran’s speech and actions can be subject to military law — a stark reminder that joining the military (or training through ROTC) can carry obligations and consequences long after “service” ends.

Moral, Legal & Personal Risks Behind the Promise

When you consider military service — through ROTC or otherwise — it’s important to weigh the full scope of what you may be signing up for:

Potential involvement in illegal or immoral wars: ROTC graduates may eventually be deployed in foreign conflicts — possibly ones controversial or condemned internationally (for example, interventions in places like Venezuela). Participation in such wars raises real moral questions about complicity in human rights abuses, “regime-change,” or other interventions that may lack democratic or legal legitimacy.

Domestic deployment and policing: Military obligations are increasingly stretching beyond foreign wars. Service members — even reservists — can be called in to deal with domestic “disputes,” civil unrest, or internal security operations. This raises ethical concerns about policing one’s own communities, and potential coercion or suppression of civil and political rights.

Long-term oversight and limited freedom: The investigation of Senator Kelly shows that veterans and officers remain under DoD jurisdiction even after service ends. That oversight can restrict free speech, dissent, or political engagement. Those seeking to escape economic hardship or limited opportunities may overlook how binding and enduring those obligations can be — even decades later.

Psychological and bodily danger: Military service often involves exposure to combat, trauma, physical injury — not to mention risks such as sexual assault, racism, sexism, and institutional abuse. Mental health consequences like PTSD are common, and the support systems for dealing with them are widely criticized as inadequate.

Institutional racism, sexism, and inequality: The military is an institution with historic and ongoing patterns of discrimination — which can exacerbate systemic injustices rather than alleviate them. For individuals coming from marginalized communities, the promise of “a way out” can come with new forms of structural violence, exploitation, or marginalization.

Career precarity and institutional control: Even after completing education or training, the reality of “limited choices” looms large. Military obligations — contractual, legal, social — can bind individuals long-term, affecting not just their mobility but their agency, conscience, and ability to critique the system.

Why Economic Incentives Often Mask the Real Costs

For many, the draw of ROTC is economic: scholarships, stable income, a way out of challenging socioeconomic circumstances, or a ticket out of a hometown with limited opportunity. These incentives are real. But as the recent case with Mark Kelly makes clear, the costs — legal, moral, social — can be far greater and more enduring than advertised. What looks like an escape route can become a lifetime of obligations, constraints, and potential complicity in questionable policies.

A Call for Caution, Conscience, and Awareness

Prospective enlistees deserve full transparency. The decision to join ROTC or the military should not be sold merely as an educational contract or a job opportunity — it is an entrance into a deeply entrenched institution, one with power, obligations, and potential for harm. The new controversy around Mark Kelly ought to serve as a wake-up call: if even a decorated former officer and sitting U.S. senator can be threatened decades after service, young people should consider carefully what they may be signing up for.

If you — or someone you care about — is thinking of joining, ask: What kind of wars might I be asked to fight? What does “service” really cost — and who pays?

Sources:

Higher Education Inquirer. Trump Sends West Virginia National Guard to D.C. Without Consulting Mayor Bowser." August 16, 2025. Higher Education Inquirer : Trump Sends West Virginia National Guard to D.C. Without Consulting Mayor Bowser

AP News. “Pentagon says it's investigating Sen. Mark Kelly over video urging troops to defy 'illegal orders'.” November 24, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/4882f76b05dcdfa3060c284c2c84dd12

The Guardian. “Mark Kelly: call for troops to disobey illegal orders is 'non-controversial'.” November 25, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/25/mark-kelly-troops-disobey-illegal-orders-comments

Reuters. “Pentagon threatens to prosecute Senator Mark Kelly by recalling him to Navy service.” November 24, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-threatens-prosecute-senator-mark-kelly-by-recalling-him-navy-service-2025-11-24/

RAND Corporation. “Mental Health and Military Service.” 2022.

Amnesty International. Human Rights Violations in Venezuela. 2023.

U.S. Department of Defense. Reports on Sexual Assault in the Military. 2024.

Washington, H. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Human Experimentation in the United States.

Rosenthal, E. An American Sickness.