The College Meltdown: A Retrospective

[In 2017, we collaborated with Crush the Street on a video describing the College Meltdown.]  

“Education is not merely a credentialing system; it is a humanizing act that fosters connection, purpose, and community.”

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Origins

The College Meltdown began in the mid-2010s as a blog chronicling the slow collapse of U.S. higher education. Rising tuition, mounting student debt, and corporatization were visible signs, but the deeper crisis was structural: the erosion of public accountability and mission.

By 2015, the warning signs were unmistakable to us. On some campuses, student spaces were closed to host corporate “best practices” conferences. At many schools, adjunct instructors carried the bulk of teaching responsibilities, often without benefits, while administrators celebrated innovation. Higher education was quietly being reshaped to benefit corporations over students and communities — a true meltdown.

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Patterns of the Meltdown

Enrollment in U.S. colleges began declining as early as 2011, reflecting broader demographic shifts: fewer children entering the system and a growing population of older adults. Small colleges, community colleges, and regional public universities were hardest hit, while flagship institutions consolidated wealth and prestige.

Corporate intermediaries known as Online Program Managers (OPMs) managed recruitment, marketing, and course design, taking large portions of tuition while universities retained risk. Fully automated robocolleges emerged, relying on AI-driven templates, predictive analytics, and outsourced grading. While efficient, these systems dehumanized education: students became data points, faculty became monitors, and mentorship disappeared.

“Robocolleges and AI-driven systems reduce humans to data points — an education stripped of connection is no education at all.”

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Feeding the AI Beast

As part of our effort to reclaim knowledge and influence public discourse, we actively contributed to Wikipedia. Over the years, we made more than 12,000 edits on higher education topics, ensuring accurate documentation of predatory practices, adjunct labor, OPMs, and corporatization. These edits both informed the public and, inadvertently, fed the AI beast — large language models and AI systems that scrape Wikipedia for training data now reflect our work, amplifying it in ways we could never have predicted.

“By documenting higher education rigorously, we shaped both public knowledge and the datasets powering AI systems — turning transparency into a tool of influence.”

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Anxiety, Anomie, and Alienation

The College Meltdown documented the mental health toll of these transformations. Rising anxiety, feelings of anomie, and widespread alienation were linked to AI reliance, dehumanized classrooms, insecure faculty labor, and societal pressures. Students felt like credential seekers; faculty suffered burnout.

“Addressing the psychological and social effects of dehumanized education is essential for ethical recovery.”

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Trump, Anti-Intellectualism, and Fear in the Era of Neoliberalism

The project also addressed the broader political and social climate. The Trump era brought rising anti-intellectualism, skepticism toward expertise, and a celebration of market logic over civic and moral education. For many, it was an era of fear: fear of surveillance, fear of litigation, fear of being marginalized in a rapidly corporatized, AI-driven educational system. Neoliberal policies exacerbated these pressures, emphasizing privatization, metrics, and competition over community and care.

“Living under Trump-era neoliberalism, with AI monitoring, corporate oversight, and mass surveillance, education became a space of anxiety as much as learning.”

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Quality of Life and the Call for Rehumanization

Education should serve human well-being, not just revenue. The blog emphasized Quality of Life and advocated for Rehumanization — restoring mentorship, personal connection, and ethical engagement.

“Rehumanization is not a luxury; it is the foundation of meaningful learning.”

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FOIA Requests and Whistleblowers

From the start, The College Meltdown relied on evidence-based reporting. FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests were used to obtain internal communications, budgets, and regulatory filings, shining light on opaque practices. Whistleblowers, including adjunct faculty and staff at universities and OPMs, provided firsthand testimony of misconduct, financial malfeasance, and educational dehumanization. Their courage was central to the project’s mission of transparency and accountability.

“Insider testimony and public records revealed the hidden forces reshaping higher education, from corporate influence to predatory practices.”

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Historical Sociology: Understanding the Systemic Collapse

The importance of historical sociology cannot be overstated in analyzing the decline of higher education. By examining the evolution of educational systems, we can identify patterns of inequality, the concentration of power, and the commodification of knowledge. Historical sociology provides the tools to understand how past decisions and structures have led to the current crisis.

“Historical sociology reveals, defines, and formulates patterns of social development, helping us understand the systemic forces at play in education.”

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Naming Bad Actors: Accountability and Reform

A critical aspect of The College Meltdown was the emphasis on naming bad actors — identifying and holding accountable those responsible for the exploitation and degradation of higher education. This included:

• University Administrators: Prioritizing profit over pedagogy.

• Corporate Entities: Robocolleges and OPMs profiting at the expense of educational quality.

• Political Figures and Ultraconservatives: Promoting policies that undermined public education and anti-intellectualism.

“Holding bad actors accountable is essential for meaningful reform and the restoration of education's ethical purpose.”

[In 2016, we called out several bad actors in for-profit higher education, including CEOs Jack Massimino, Kevin Modany, and Todd Nelson.] 

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Existential Aspects of Climate Change

The blog also examined the existential dimensions of climate change. Students and faculty face a dual challenge: preparing for uncertain futures while witnessing environmental degradation accelerate. Higher education itself is implicated, both as a contributor through consumption and as a forum for solutions. The looming climate crisis intensifies anxiety, alienation, and the urgency for ethical, human-centered education.

“Climate change makes the stakes of education existential: our survival, our knowledge, and our moral responsibility are intertwined.”

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Mass Speculation and Financialization

Another critical theme explored was mass speculation and financialization. The expansion of student debt markets, tuition-backed bonds, and corporate investments in higher education transformed students into financial instruments. These speculative dynamics mirrored broader economic instability, creating both a moral and systemic crisis for the educational sector.

“When education becomes a commodity for speculation, learning, mentorship, and ethical development are subordinated to profit and risk metrics.”

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Coverage of Protests and Nonviolent Resistance

The College Meltdown documented student and faculty resistance: tuition protests, adjunct labor actions, and campaigns against predatory OPM arrangements. Nonviolent action was central: teach-ins, sit-ins, and organized campaigns demonstrated moral authority and communal solidarity in the face of systemic pressures, litigation, and corporate intimidation.

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Collaboration and Resistance

Glen McGhee provided exceptional guidance, connecting insights on systemic collapse, inequality, and credential inflation. Guest authors contributed across disciplines and movements, making the blog a living archive of accountability and solidarity:

Guest Contributors:
Bryan Alexander, Ann Bowers, James Michael Brodie, Randall Collins, Garrett Fitzgerald, Erica Gallagher, Henry Giroux, David Halperin, Bill Harrington, Phil Hill, Robert Jensen, Hank Kalet, Neil Kraus, the LACCD Whistleblower, Wendy Lynne Lee, Annelise Orleck, Robert Kelchen, Debbi Potts, Jack Metzger, Derek Newton, Gary Roth, Mark Salisbury, Gary Stocker, Harry Targ, Heidi Weber, Richard Wolff, and Helena Worthen.

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Lessons from the Meltdown

The crisis was systemic. Technology amplified inequality. Corporate higher education rebranded rather than reformed. Adjunctification and labor precarity became normalized. Communities of color and working-class students suffered disproportionately.

Dehumanization emerged as a central theme. AI, automation, and robocolleges prioritized efficiency over mentorship, data over dialogue, and systems over human relationships. Rising anxiety, anomie, and alienation reflected the human toll.

“Rehumanization, mentorship, community, transparency, ethical accountability, and ecological awareness are essential to restore meaningful higher education.”

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Looking Forward

As higher education entered the Trump era, its future remained uncertain. Students, faculty, and communities faced fear under neoliberal policies, AI-driven monitoring, mass surveillance, litigation pressures, ultraconservative influence, climate crises, and financial speculation. Will universities reclaim their role as public goods, or continue as commodified services? The College Meltdown stands as a testament to those who resisted dehumanization and anti-intellectualism. It also calls for Quality of Life, ethical practice, mental well-being, environmental responsibility, and Rehumanization, ensuring education serves the whole person, not just the bottom line. 

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Sources and References

• Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid. Doubleday, 2006.

• Rosenthal, Elisabeth. An American Sickness. Penguin, 2017.

• Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Crown, 2010.

• Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul. University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

• Paucek, Chip. “2U and the Growth of OPMs.” EdSurge, 2021. link

• Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Basic Books, 2010.

• Alexander, Bryan. Academia Next. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

• U.S. Department of Education. “Closed School Information.” 2016–2020. link

• Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Student Debt Statistics, 2024. link

• Wayback Machine Archive of College Meltdown Blog: link

The Grand Irony of Nursing Education and Burnout in U.S. Health Care

Nursing has long been romanticized as both a “calling” and a profession—an occupation where devotion to patients is assumed to be limitless. Nursing schools, hospitals, and media narratives often reinforce this ideal, framing the nurse as a tireless caregiver who sacrifices for the greater good. But behind the cultural image is a system that normalizes exhaustion, accepts overwork, and relies on the quiet suffering of an increasingly strained workforce.

The cultural expectation that nurses should sacrifice their own well-being has deep historical roots. Florence Nightingale’s legacy in the mid-19th century portrayed nursing as a noble vocation, tied as much to moral virtue as to medical skill. During World War I and World War II, nurses were celebrated as patriotic servants, enduring brutal conditions without complaint. By the late 20th century, popular culture reinforced the idea of the nurse as both saintly and stoic—expected to carry on through fatigue, trauma, and loss. This framing has carried into the 21st century. During the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses were lauded as “heroes” in speeches, advertisements, and nightly news coverage. But the rhetoric of heroism masked a harsher reality: nurses were sent into hospitals without adequate protective equipment, with overwhelming patient loads, and with little institutional support. The language of devotion was used as a shield against criticism, even as nurses themselves broke down from exhaustion.

The problem begins in nursing education. Students are taught the technical skills of patient care, but they are also socialized into a culture that emphasizes resilience, self-sacrifice, and “doing whatever it takes.” Clinical rotations often expose nursing students to chronic understaffing and unsafe patient loads, but instead of treating this as structural failure, students are told it is simply “the reality of nursing.” In effect, they are trained to adapt to dysfunction rather than challenge it.

Once in the workforce, the pressures intensify. Hospitals and clinics operate under tight staffing budgets, pushing nurses to manage far more patients than recommended. Shifts stretch from 12 to 16 hours, and mandatory overtime is not uncommon. Documentation demands, electronic medical record systems, and administrative oversight add layers of clerical work that take time away from direct patient care. The emotional toll of constantly navigating life-and-death decisions, combined with lack of rest, creates a perfect storm of burnout. The grand irony is that the profession celebrates devotion while neglecting the well-being of the devoted. Nurses are praised as “heroes” during crises, but when they ask for better staffing ratios, safer conditions, or mental health support, they are often dismissed as “not team players.” In non-unionized hospitals, the risks are magnified: nurses have little leverage to negotiate schedules, resist unsafe assignments, or push back against retaliation. Instead, they are expected to remain loyal, even as stress erodes their health and shortens their careers.

Recent years have shown that nurses are increasingly unwilling to accept this reality. In Oregon in 2025, nearly 5,000 unionized nurses, physicians, and midwives staged the largest health care worker strike in the state’s history, demanding higher wages, better staffing levels, and workload adjustments that reflect patient severity rather than just patient numbers. After six weeks, they secured a contract with substantial pay raises, penalty pay for missed breaks, and staffing reforms. In New Orleans, nurses at University Medical Center have launched repeated strikes as negotiations stall, citing unsafe staffing that puts both their health and their patients at risk. These actions are not isolated. In 2022, approximately 15,000 Minnesota nurses launched the largest private-sector nurses’ strike in U.S. history, and since 2020 the number of nurse strikes nationwide has more than tripled.

Alongside strikes, nurses are pushing for legislative solutions. At the federal level, the Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act has been introduced, which would mandate minimum nurse-to-patient ratios and provide whistleblower protections. In New York, the Safe Staffing for Hospital Care Act seeks to set legally enforceable staffing levels and ban most mandatory overtime. Even California, long considered a leader in nurse staffing ratios, has faced crises in psychiatric hospitals so severe that Governor Gavin Newsom introduced emergency rules to address chronic understaffing linked to patient harm. Enforcement remains uneven, however. At Albany Medical Center in New York, chronic understaffing violations led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, a reminder that without strong oversight, even well-crafted laws can be ignored.

The United States’ piecemeal and adversarial approach contrasts sharply with other countries. In Canada, provinces like British Columbia have legislated nurse-to-patient ratios similar to those in California, and in Quebec, unions won agreements that legally cap workloads for certain units. In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service has long recognized safe staffing as a matter of public accountability, and while austerity policies have strained the system, England, Wales, and Scotland all employ government-set nurse-to-patient standards to protect both patients and staff. Nordic countries go further, with Sweden and Norway integrating nurse well-being into health policy; short shifts, strong union protections, and publicly funded healthcare systems reduce the risk of burnout by design. While no system is perfect, these models show that burnout is not inevitable—it is a political and policy choice.

Union presence consistently makes a difference. Studies show that unionized nurses are more successful at securing safe staffing ratios, resisting exploitative scheduling, and advocating for patient safety. But unionization rates in nursing remain uneven, and in many states nurses are discouraged or even legally restricted from organizing. Without collective power, individual nurses are forced to rely on personal endurance, which is precisely what the system counts on.

The outcome is devastating not only for nurses but for patients. Burnout leads to higher turnover, staffing shortages, and medical errors—all while nursing schools continue to churn out new graduates to replace those driven from the profession. It is a cycle sustained by institutional denial and the myth of infinite devotion.

If U.S. higher education is serious about preparing nurses for the future, nursing programs must move beyond the rhetoric of sacrifice. They need to teach students not only how to care for patients but also how to advocate for themselves and their colleagues. They need to expose the structural causes of burnout and prepare nurses to demand better conditions, not simply endure them. Until then, the irony remains: a profession that celebrates care while sacrificing its caregivers.

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Sources

• American Nurses Association (ANA). “Workplace Stress & Burnout.” ANA Enterprise, 2023.

• National Nurses United. Nursing Staffing Crisis in the United States, 2022.

• Bae, S. “Nurse Staffing and Patient Outcomes: A Literature Review.” Nursing Outlook, Vol. 64, No. 3 (2016): 322-333.

• Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Union Members Summary.” U.S. Department of Labor, 2024.

• Shah, M.K., Gandrakota, N., Cimiotti, J.P., Ghose, N., Moore, M., Ali, M.K. “Prevalence of and Factors Associated With Nurse Burnout in the US.” JAMA Network Open, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2021): e2036469.

• Nelson, Sioban. Say Little, Do Much: Nursing, Nuns, and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

• Kalisch, Philip A. & Kalisch, Beatrice J. The Advance of American Nursing. Little, Brown, 1986.

• Oregon Capital Chronicle, “Governor Kotek Criticizes Providence Over Largest Strike of Health Care Workers in State History,” January 2025.

• Associated Press, “Oregon Health Care Strike Ends After Six Weeks,” February 2025.

• National Nurses United, “New Orleans Nurses Deliver Notice for Third Strike at UMC,” 2025.

• NurseTogether, “Nurse Strikes: An Increasing Trend in the U.S.,” 2024.

• New York State Senate Bill S4003, “Safe Staffing for Hospital Care Act,” 2025.

• San Francisco Chronicle, “Newsom Imposes Emergency Staffing Rules at State Psychiatric Hospitals,” 2025.

• Times Union, “Editorial: Hospital’s Staffing Violations Show Need for Enforcement,” 2025.

• Oulton, J.A. “The Global Nursing Shortage: An Overview of Issues and Actions.” Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2006): 34S–39S.

• Rafferty, Anne Marie et al. “Outcomes of Variation in Hospital Nurse Staffing in English Hospitals.” BMJ Quality & Safety, 2007.

• Aiken, Linda H. et al. “Nurse Staffing and Education and Hospital Mortality in Nine European Countries.” The Lancet, Vol. 383, No. 9931 (2014): 1824–1830.

Confidence Games and Crumbling Institutions: Echoes of 1857 in 2025

In 1857, Herman Melville published The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a cryptic, satirical novel set aboard a Mississippi steamboat. The titular character—ever-shifting, ever-deceiving—exploits the trust of passengers in a society obsessed with profit, spectacle, and moral ambiguity. That same year, the United States plunged into its first global financial crisis, the Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision denying citizenship to Black Americans, and violence erupted in Kansas over slavery. The nation was expanding westward while morally imploding.

Fast forward to 2025, and the parallels are chilling.

The Collapse of Confidence

The Panic of 1857 was triggered by speculative bubbles, banking failures, and the sinking of a gold-laden ship meant to stabilize Eastern banks. In 2025, the U.S. faces a different kind of panic: record-high debt servicing costs, a fragile labor market dominated by gig work, and a public increasingly skeptical of financial institutions. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, has slashed federal jobs and privatized public services, echoing the confidence games of Melville’s era.

Trust—once the bedrock of civic life—is now a currency in freefall.

Judicial Earthquakes and Political Fragmentation

In 1857, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision shattered any illusion of unity. Today, the return of Donald Trump to the presidency has reignited deep political divisions. Executive orders, agency dismantling, and immigration crackdowns have triggered constitutional challenges reminiscent of the 1850s. The rule of law feels increasingly negotiable.

Higher education institutions, once bastions of reasoned debate, now find themselves caught between political polarization and economic precarity. Faculty are pressured to conform, students are surveilled, and public trust in academia is eroding.

Spectacle, Deception, and the Digital Masquerade

Melville’s confidence man sold fake medicines and bogus charities. In 2025, deception is digitized: AI-generated content, deepfakes, and influencer culture dominate public discourse. The masquerade continues—only now the steamboat is a livestream, and the con artist might be an algorithm.

Universities must grapple with this new epistemological crisis. What is truth in an age of synthetic media? What is scholarship when data itself can be manipulated?

Moral Reckonings and Institutional Failure

In both 1857 and 2025, America faces a reckoning. Then, it was slavery and sectional violence. Now, it’s climate collapse, racial injustice, and the erosion of democratic norms. The question is not whether institutions will survive—but whether they can evolve.

Higher education must decide: Will it be a passive observer of decline, or an active agent of renewal?

The Confidence Man Returns

Melville’s novel ends without resolution. The confidence man disappears into the crowd, leaving readers to wonder whether anyone aboard the steamboat was ever truly honest. In 2025, we face a similar uncertainty. The masquerade continues, and the stakes are higher than ever.

For higher education, the challenge is clear: to restore trust, to defend truth, and to prepare students not just for jobs—but for citizenship in an age of confidence games.

The Higher Education Inquirer: Six Hundred Thousand Views, and Still Digging

The Higher Education Inquirer has crossed another milestone, reaching more than 600,000 views over the past quarter. For a niche publication without corporate backing, this is a significant achievement. But the real measure of success is not in page views—it is in the stories that matter, the investigations that refuse to die even when the higher education establishment would rather they disappear.

Since its inception, HEI has taken the long view on the crises and contradictions shaping U.S. colleges and universities. We continue to probe the issues that mainstream media outlets often skim or ignore. These are not passing headlines; they are structural problems, many of them decades in the making, that affect millions of students, faculty, staff, and communities.

Among the stories we continue to pursue:

• Charlie Kirk and Neofascism on Campus: Tracing how right-wing movements use higher education as a recruiting ground, and how student martyrdom narratives fuel a dangerous cycle.

• Academic Labor and Adjunctification: Investigating the systemic exploitation of contingent faculty, who now make up the majority of the academic workforce.

• Higher Education and Underemployment: Examining how rising tuition, debt, and credentials collide with a labor market that cannot absorb the graduates it produces.

• EdTech, Robocolleges, and the University of Phoenix: Following the money as education technology corporations replace faculty with algorithms and marketing schemes.

• Student Loan Debt and Borrower Defense to Repayment: Tracking litigation, regulatory shifts, and the human toll of a $1.7 trillion debt system.

• U.S. Department of Education Oversight: Analyzing how federal enforcement waxes and wanes with political cycles, often leaving students exposed.

• Online Program Managers and Higher Ed Privatization: Investigating the outsourcing of core academic functions to companies driven by profit, not pedagogy.

• Edugrift and Bad Actors in Higher Education: Naming the profiteers who siphon billions from public trust.

• Medugrift and University Medicine Oligopolies: Connecting elite medical centers to systemic inequality in U.S. healthcare.

• Student Protests: Documenting student resistance to injustice on campus and beyond.

• University Endowments and Opaque Funding Sources: Pulling back the curtain on how universities build wealth while raising tuition.

• Universities and Gentrification: Exposing the displacement of working-class communities in the name of “campus expansion.”

• Ambow Education as a Potential National Security Threat: Tracking foreign-controlled for-profit education companies and their entanglements.

• Accreditation: Examining the gatekeepers of legitimacy and their failure to protect students.

• International Students: Covering the precarity of students navigating U.S. immigration and education systems.

• Student Health and Welfare: Looking at how universities fail to provide adequate physical and mental health support.

• Hypercredentialism: Interrogating the endless inflation of degrees and certificates that drain students’ time and money.

• Veritas: Pursuing truth in higher education, no matter how uncomfortable.

These are the stories that make HEI more than just a blog—they make it a watchdog. As higher education drifts deeper into corporatization and inequality, we will keep asking difficult questions, exposing contradictions, and documenting resistance.

The numbers are gratifying. But the truth is what matters.

Truth as Therapy for Higher Education

Anosognosia is the inability to recognize one’s own illness or disability. In higher education, it describes the chronic denial of a system in crisis—one that refuses to admit its own collapse.

For decades, U.S. higher education has been sold as the great equalizer. The story was simple: borrow, study, graduate, succeed. But the data show the opposite. What we are witnessing is a long college meltdown, masked by denial at the highest levels of government, university administrations, and Wall Street.

The Debt Trap

• Outstanding student loan debt now exceeds $1.77 trillion, burdening more than 43 million Americans.

• Nearly 20 percent of borrowers are in default or serious delinquency.

• Black borrowers, especially Black women, carry the heaviest burdens and are least likely to see upward mobility from their degrees.

• Many in income-driven repayment programs will never pay off principal, living in a permanent state of debt peonage.

Universities and policymakers insist debt is an “investment.” But for millions, it is a generational shackle.

The Exploited Faculty

• More than 70 percent of college instructors are contingent.

• Adjuncts often earn less than $3,500 per course, with no healthcare, no retirement, and no security.

• Roughly one in four adjuncts relies on public assistance.

Universities still market themselves as communities of scholars. In reality, they operate on the same exploitative labor practices as Uber or Amazon.

The Employment Mismatch

• Four in ten recent grads work in jobs that don’t require a degree.

• One-third of graduates say their work is unrelated to their major.

• Median real wages for college graduates have been flat for 25 years.

Still, higher ed pushes “lifelong learning” credentials, turning underemployment into a new revenue stream.

Prestige as Denial

• At Ivy League universities, 40 percent of students come from the top 5 percent of households.

• Fewer than 5 percent come from the bottom fifth.

• Endowments soar—Harvard’s sits at $50 billion—but tuition relief and faculty wages barely budge.

This is not mobility. It is a hereditary elite cloaked in the language of meritocracy.

Climate Contradictions

• Universities promote sustainability but invest billions in fossil fuels.

• Campus expansion and luxury amenities drive up emissions, water use, and labor exploitation.

Even here, anosognosia reigns: branding over reality.

The Meltdown Denied

The college meltdown has been unfolding for more than a decade:

• Small liberal arts colleges shuttering.

• Regional publics bleeding enrollments.

• For-profits morphing into “nonprofits” while still funneling money to investors.

• State funding eroded, shifting the cost to students and families.

But instead of confronting the collapse, higher ed leaders rely on rhetoric: “innovation,” “resilience,” “access.” Like anosognosia, denial itself becomes survival.

The Human Cost

The denial is not harmless. It is measured in:

• The indebted graduate delaying family formation and homeownership.

• The adjunct commuting across counties to string together courses while living below the poverty line.

• The working-class family betting their savings on a degree that will not deliver mobility.

The meltdown is here. Higher education’s inability—or refusal—to admit it ensures the damage will deepen.

Truth and Healing 

Anosognosia prevents healing because it prevents recognition of the problem. U.S. higher education cannot admit its own disease, so it cannot begin recovery. Until it does, students, families, and workers will bear the costs of a system in denial.

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Sources

• Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit (2025)

• National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Digest of Education Statistics (2023)

• American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession (2024)

• Pew Research Center, The Rising Cost of Not Going to College (2023 update)

• The Century Foundation, Adjunct Project (2022)

• Chetty et al., Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility (2017, with updates)

• IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System), U.S. Department of Education

• Harvard Management Company, Endowment Report (2024)

• Higher Education Inquirer, College Meltdown archive (2018–2025)

Trump's War on Reality

The second Trump administration has unleashed a coordinated assault on reality itself—an effort that extends far beyond policy disagreements into the realm of deliberate gaslighting. Agency by agency, Trump’s lieutenants are reshaping facts, science, and language to consolidate power. Many of these figures, despite their populist rhetoric, come from elite universities, corporate boardrooms, or dynastic wealth. Their campaign is not just about dismantling government—it’s about erasing the ground truth that ordinary people rely on.

Department of State → Department of War

One of the starkest shifts has been renaming the State Department the “Department of War.” This rhetorical change signals the administration’s embrace of permanent conflict as strategy. Secretary Pete Hegseth, a Princeton graduate and former hedge fund executive, embodies the contradiction: Ivy League polish combined with cable-news bravado. Under his watch, diplomacy is downgraded, alliances undermined, and propaganda elevated to policy.

Department of Defense

The Pentagon has been retooled into a megaphone for Trump’s narrative that America is perpetually under siege. Despite the promise of “America First,” decisions consistently empower China and Russia by destabilizing traditional alliances. The irony: many of the architects of this policy cut their teeth at elite think tanks funded by the same defense contractors now profiting from chaos.

Department of Education

Trump’s appointees have doubled down on dismantling federal oversight, echoing the administration’s hostility to “woke indoctrination.” Yet the leaders spearheading this push often come from private prep schools and elite universities themselves. They know the value of credentialism for their own children, while stripping protections and opportunities from working families.

Department of Justice

Justice has been weaponized into a tool of disinformation. Elite law school alumni now run campaigns against “deep state” prosecutors, while simultaneously eroding safeguards against corruption. The result is a justice system where truth is malleable, determined not by evidence but by loyalty.

Department of Health and Human Services

Public health has been subsumed into culture war theatrics. Scientific consensus on climate, vaccines, and long-term health research is dismissed as partisan propaganda. Yet many of the leaders driving this narrative hail from institutions like Harvard and Stanford, where they once benefited from cutting-edge science, they now ridicule.

Environmental Protection Agency

The EPA has become the Environmental Pollution Agency, rolling back rules while gaslighting the public with claims of “cleaner air than ever.” Appointees often come directly from corporate law firms representing Big Oil and Big Coal, cloaking extractive capitalism in the language of freedom.

Department of Labor

Workers are told they are winning even as wages stagnate and union protections collapse. The elites orchestrating this rollback frequently hold MBAs from Wharton or Harvard Business School. They speak the language of “opportunity” while overseeing the erosion of worker rights and benefits.

Department of Homeland Security

Reality itself is policed here, where dissent is rebranded as domestic extremism. Elite operatives with ties to intelligence contractors enforce surveillance on ordinary Americans, while elite families enjoy immunity from scrutiny.

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The Elite Architecture of Gaslighting

What unites these agencies is not just Trump’s directives, but the pedigree of the people carrying them out. Far from being the populist outsiders they claim to be, many hail from Ivy League schools, white-shoe law firms, or Fortune 500 boardrooms. They weaponize their privilege to convince the public that up is down, war is peace and lies are truth.

The war on reality is not a sideshow—it is the central project of this administration. For elites, it is a way to entrench their power. For the rest of us, it means living in a hall of mirrors where truth is constantly rewritten, and democracy itself hangs in the balance.

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Sources

• New York Times, Trump’s Cabinet and Their Elite Connections

• Washington Post, How Trump Loyalists Are Reshaping Federal Agencies

• Politico, The Ivy League Populists of Trump’s Inner Circle

• ProPublica, Trump Administration’s Conflicts of Interest

• Brookings Institution, Trump’s Assault on the Administrative State

• Center for American Progress, Gaslighting the Public: Trump’s War on Facts

The University of California Meltdown: Trump’s Extortion Meets Years of Student Suppression

University of California (UC) President James Milliken has sounded an alarm over what he calls one of the “gravest threats” in the institution’s 157-year history. In testimony before state lawmakers, Milliken outlined a looming financial crisis sparked by sweeping federal funding cuts and unprecedented political demands from the Trump administration.

The UC system — spanning 10 campuses, five medical centers, and serving hundreds of thousands of students and patients — receives more than $17 billion in federal funds annually. That includes $9.9 billion in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, $5.7 billion in research dollars, and $1.9 billion in student financial aid. According to Milliken, much of this funding is now at risk.

Already, UCLA alone has seen more than $500 million in research grants cut. On top of that, the administration has levied a $1.2 billion penalty against the system, alleging that UCLA and other campuses failed to adequately address antisemitism.

“These shortfalls, combined with the administration’s punitive demands, could devastate our university and cause enormous harm to our students, our patients, and all Californians,” Milliken warned. He has requested at least $4 to $5 billion annually in state aid to blunt the impact of federal cuts.

More Than a Budget Fight

The Trump administration has tied federal funding to sweeping political conditions, including:

• Release of detailed admissions data.

• Restrictions on protests.

• Elimination of race-related scholarships and diversity hiring.

• A ban on gender-affirming care for minors at UCLA health centers.

Critics argue that these conditions amount to political blackmail, undermining both academic freedom and healthcare access.

California Governor Gavin Newsom denounced the federal measures as “extortion” and “a page out of the authoritarian playbook.” Thirty-three state legislators urged UC leaders “not to back down in the face of this political shakedown.”

Protesters in the Crossfire

Yet while UC leaders frame themselves as defenders of free inquiry, many students and faculty who have protested war, racism, and inequality have found themselves silenced by the very system that now claims victimhood.

• 2011 UC Davis Occupy Protest: Images of police casually pepper-spraying seated students went viral, symbolizing the university’s harsh response to peaceful dissent.

• 2019 UC Santa Cruz Graduate Worker Strike: Graduate students demanding a cost-of-living adjustment were fired, evicted, or disciplined rather than heard.

• 2022 UC Irvine Labor Strikes: Workers organizing for fair pay and job security faced heavy-handed tactics from administrators.

• 2023–24 Gaza Encampments: UC campuses, including UCLA and UC Berkeley, called in police to dismantle student encampments protesting U.S. and UC complicity in Israel’s war in Gaza. Dozens of students were arrested, suspended, or disciplined for their participation.

These incidents show a pattern: UC celebrates academic freedom in official statements, but clamps down when protests threaten its ties to corporate donors, political interests, or foreign governments.

As one Berkeley student put it during the Gaza protests: “The university claims it’s under attack from Trump’s censorship — but it censors us every single day.”

UC’s Own Accountability Problem

Beyond silencing dissent, UC has been unresponsive to many Californians on broader issues: rising tuition, limited in-state enrollment, reliance on low-paid adjuncts, and partnerships with corporations that profit from student debt and labor precarity. For many working families, UC feels less like a public institution and more like an elite research enterprise serving industry and politics.

This contradiction makes the current crisis double-edged. UC is indeed being targeted by the Trump administration, but it also faces a legitimacy crisis at home.

Looking Ahead

Milliken, who took office as UC President on August 1, is lobbying state lawmakers to commit billions annually to offset federal cuts. But UC’s survival may hinge not only on political deals in Sacramento, but also on whether it can rebuild trust with the Californians it has too often sidelined — including the protesters and whistleblowers who have been warning for years about its drift away from public accountability.

The larger struggle, then, is not just UC versus Washington. It is about whether a public university system can still live up to its mission of serving the people — not corporations, not politicians, and not the wealthy few who hold the purse strings.

---

Sources:

• University of California Office of the President

• California State Legislature records

• Statements from Gov. Gavin Newsom

• U.S. Department of Justice communications

• Higher Education Inquirer archives on UC protest suppression and public accountability

• Coverage of UC Davis pepper-spray incident (2011), UC Santa Cruz COLA strike (2019), UC Irvine labor strikes (2022), Gaza encampment crackdowns (2023–24)

Every Day Should Be Labor Day

As Americans celebrate Labor Day, the traditional holiday honoring workers, it is worth asking a blunt question: why do we set aside only one day to recognize the people who keep this country running? For the majority of working-class Americans, labor is not a seasonal event—it is a daily struggle. And yet, political and economic systems continue to undervalue, underpay, and exploit the very workforce that sustains them.

The numbers are stark. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that over 100 million Americans are part of the labor force. Yet median wages have barely budged in decades, while the top 1% of earners have seen their wealth multiply. In higher education, adjunct professors often earn less than $30,000 a year while carrying the teaching load of full-time faculty, and the majority of college graduates leave school with over $30,000 in student loan debt, only to find themselves in jobs that fail to utilize their skills or provide financial security.

The “gig economy” promised flexibility and empowerment, but in reality it has created precarious work with no benefits, no sick leave, and few protections. Companies like Amazon, Uber, and DoorDash rely on a workforce that bears nearly all the risk while executives reap outsized rewards. The same dynamic extends to knowledge industries: research assistants, graduate students, and postdocs often perform essential labor for universities without fair compensation, health care, or job security.

Labor Day should not simply celebrate the ideal of work—it should spotlight injustice. It should remind policymakers, university administrators, and corporate leaders that the human cost of economic growth is real and rising. Childcare costs, rent, healthcare premiums, and student debt are not abstract numbers—they are barriers that prevent workers from achieving economic stability or pursuing meaningful lives outside of work.

Across the country, workers are pushing back. Teachers strike to demand fair pay and better conditions. Nurses, long on the frontlines of a pandemic, advocate for safer staffing levels and respect. Fast-food workers, warehouse employees, and adjunct faculty organize for recognition and dignity. These struggles reveal a truth that is too often ignored: every worker deserves more than symbolic recognition; they deserve economic justice, security, and respect every single day of the year.

For policymakers, higher education leaders, and business executives, the lesson is clear: labor should not be celebrated just once a year. Fair wages, comprehensive benefits, and meaningful protections should be the baseline for every workplace. The fight for workers’ rights is ongoing, and the consequences of ignoring it are profound—not just for individual families, but for the health of the American economy itself.

This Labor Day, Americans should reflect on a simple truth: the nation thrives not because of CEOs, venture capitalists, or administrators, but because millions of people show up to work every day under conditions that are far from ideal. If respect for labor is genuine, it cannot be confined to a single Monday in September. Every day should be Labor Day.

---

Sources:

• U.S. Department of Labor, Labor Force Statistics

• Federal Reserve, Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households

• National Center for Education Statistics, Adjunct Faculty Data

• Economic Policy Institute, The State of American Wages

• Brookings Institution, Gig Economy and Worker Precarity

100 Ways the Trump Administration Has Undermined the Environment, Human Rights, World and Domestic Peace, Labor, and Knowledge

The Trump administration, since returning to power in 2025, has escalated attacks on the foundations of democracy, the environment, world peace, human rights, and intellectual inquiry. While the administration has marketed itself as “America First,” its policies have more often meant profits for the ultra-wealthy, repression for the working majority, and escalating dangers for the planet.

Below is a running list of 100 of the most dangerous actions and policies—a record of how quickly a government can dismantle hard-won protections for people, peace, and the planet.

---

I. Attacks on the Environment

1. Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement—again.

2. Dismantling the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

3. Opening federal lands and national parks to oil, gas, and mining leases.

4. Gutting protections for endangered species.

5. Allowing coal companies to dump mining waste in rivers and streams.

6. Rolling back vehicle fuel efficiency standards.

7. Subsidizing fossil fuel companies while defunding renewable energy programs.

8. Suppressing climate science at federal agencies.

9. Greenlighting pipelines that threaten Indigenous lands and water supplies.

10. Promoting offshore drilling in fragile ecosystems.

11. Weakening Clean Water Act enforcement.

12. Dismantling environmental justice programs that protect poor communities.

13. Politicizing NOAA and censoring weather/climate warnings.

14. Undermining international climate cooperation at the UN.

15. Allowing pesticides banned in Europe to return to U.S. farms.

---

II. Undermining World Peace and Global Stability

16. Threatening military action against Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.

17. Expanding the nuclear arsenal instead of pursuing arms control.

18. Cutting funding for diplomacy and the State Department.

19. Withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO).

20. Weakening NATO alliances with inflammatory rhetoric.

21. Escalating drone strikes and loosening rules of engagement.

22. Providing cover for authoritarian leaders worldwide.

23. Walking away from peace negotiations in the Middle East.

24. Blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, Yemen, and other war-torn areas.

25. Expanding weapons sales to Saudi Arabia despite human rights abuses.

26. Using tariffs and sanctions as blunt instruments against allies.

27. Politicizing intelligence briefings to justify military adventurism.

28. Abandoning refugee protections and asylum agreements.

29. Treating climate refugees as security threats.

30. Reducing U.S. participation in the United Nations.

---

III. Attacks on Human Rights and the Rule of Law

31. Expanding family separation policies at the border.

32. Targeting asylum seekers for indefinite detention.

33. Militarizing immigration enforcement with National Guard troops.

34. Attacking reproductive rights and defunding women’s health programs.

35. Rolling back LGBTQ+ protections in schools and workplaces.

36. Reinstating bans on transgender service members in the military.

37. Undermining voting rights through purges and voter ID laws.

38. Packing the courts with extremist judges hostile to civil rights.

39. Weaponizing the Justice Department against political opponents.

40. Expanding surveillance powers with little oversight.

41. Encouraging police crackdowns on protests.

42. Expanding use of federal troops in U.S. cities.

43. Weakening consent decrees against abusive police departments.

44. Refusing to investigate hate crimes tied to far-right violence.

45. Deporting long-term immigrants with no criminal record.

---

IV. Attacks on Domestic Peace and Tranquility

46. Encouraging militias and extremist groups with dog whistles.

47. Using inflammatory rhetoric that stokes racial and religious hatred.

48. Equating journalists with “enemies of the people.”

49. Cutting funds for community-based violence prevention.

50. Politicizing natural disaster relief.

51. Treating peaceful protests as national security threats.

52. Expanding federal use of facial recognition surveillance.

53. Undermining local control with federal overreach.

54. Stigmatizing entire religious and ethnic groups.

55. Promoting conspiracy theories from the presidential podium.

56. Encouraging violent crackdowns on labor strikes.

57. Undermining pandemic preparedness and response.

58. Allowing corporations to sidestep workplace safety rules.

59. Shutting down diversity and inclusion training across agencies.

60. Promoting vigilante violence through online platforms.

---

V. Attacks on Labor Rights and the Working Class

61. Weakening the Department of Labor’s enforcement of wage theft.

62. Blocking attempts to raise the federal minimum wage.

63. Undermining collective bargaining rights for federal workers.

64. Supporting right-to-work laws across states.

65. Allowing employers to misclassify gig workers as “independent contractors.”

66. Blocking new OSHA safety standards.

67. Expanding exemptions for overtime pay.

68. Weakening rules on child labor in agriculture.

69. Cutting unemployment benefits during economic downturns.

70. Favoring union-busting corporations in federal contracts.

71. Rolling back protections for striking workers.

72. Encouraging outsourcing of jobs overseas.

73. Weakening enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in workplaces.

74. Cutting funding for worker retraining programs.

75. Promoting unpaid internships as a “pathway” to jobs.

---

VI. Attacks on Intellectualism and Knowledge

76. Defunding the Department of Education in favor of privatization.

77. Attacking public universities as “woke indoctrination centers.”

78. Promoting for-profit colleges with predatory practices.

79. Restricting student loan forgiveness programs.

80. Undermining Title IX protections for sexual harassment.

81. Defunding libraries and public broadcasting.

82. Politicizing scientific research grants.

83. Firing federal scientists who contradict administration narratives.

84. Suppressing research on gun violence.

85. Censoring federal climate and environmental data.

86. Promoting creationism and Christian nationalism in schools.

87. Expanding surveillance of student activists.

88. Encouraging book bans in schools and libraries.

89. Undermining accreditation standards for higher education.

90. Attacking historians who challenge nationalist myths.

91. Cutting humanities funding in favor of military research.

92. Encouraging political litmus tests for professors.

93. Treating journalists as combatants in a “culture war.”

94. Promoting AI-driven “robocolleges” with no faculty oversight.

95. Gutting federal student aid programs.

96. Allowing corporate donors to dictate university policy.

97. Discouraging international students from studying in the U.S.

98. Criminalizing whistleblowers who reveal government misconduct.

99. Promoting conspiracy theories over peer-reviewed science.

100. Normalizing ignorance as a political strategy.        

HEI Resources Fall 2025

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

Books

• Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.  
  
• Alexander, Bryan (2023).  Universities on Fire. Johns Hopkins Press.  
  
• Angulo, A. (2016). Diploma Mills: How For-profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Apthekar,  Bettina (1966) Big Business and the American University. New Outlook Publishers.  
• Apthekar, Bettina (1969). Higher education and the student rebellion in the United States, 1960-1969 : a bibliography.
  
• Archibald, R. and Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America's Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.
• Armstrong, E. and Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.
• Arum, R. and Roksa, J. (2011). Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press. 
• Baldwin, Davarian (2021). In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. Bold Type Books.  
• Bennett, W. and Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education. Thomas Nelson.
• Berg, I. (1970). "The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs." Praeger.
• Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University.  Princeton University Press. 
  
• Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.
• Best, J. and Best, E. (2014) The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. Atkinson Family Foundation.
Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. Norton.
• Bogue, E. Grady and Aper, Jeffrey.  (2000). Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education: The Evolution of Philosophy and Policy. 
• Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace : The Commercialization of Higher Education.  Princeton University Press. 
  
• Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation. NYU Press.
• Brennan, J & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press. 
• Brint, S., & Karabel, J. The Diverted Dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900–1985. Oxford University Press. (1989).
• Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024) Whiteness in the Ivory Tower: Why Don't We Notice the White Students Sitting Together in the Quad? Teachers College Press.
  
• Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus: Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of "Post-Racial" Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.
  
• Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Princeton University Press.
• Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off?: A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You'll Ever Make. Public Affairs.
• Cassuto, Leonard (2015). The Graduate School Mess. Harvard University Press. 
• Caterine, Christopher (2020). Leaving Academia. Princeton Press. 
• Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.
• Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass: How America's Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission University of Chicago Press.
• Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Collins, Randall. (1979/2019) The Credential Society. Academic Press. Columbia University Press. 
• Cottom, T. (2016). Lower Ed: How For-profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America
• Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? 8th Edition. Routledge.
  
• Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.
• Dorn, Charles. (2017) For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America Cornell University Press.
• Eaton, Charlie.  (2022) Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education. University of Chicago Press.
  
• Eisenmann, Linda. (2006) Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
• Espenshade, T., Walton Radford, A.(2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life. Princeton University Press.
• Faragher, John Mack and Howe, Florence, ed. (1988). Women and Higher Education in American History. Norton.
• Farber, Jerry (1972).  The University of Tomorrowland.  Pocket Books. 
  
• Freeman, Richard B. (1976). The Overeducated American. Academic Press.
• Gaston, P. (2014). Higher Education Accreditation. Stylus.
• Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why It Matters
• Giroux, Henry (1983).  Theory and Resistance in Education. Bergin and Garvey Press
Giroux, Henry (2022). Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance. Bloomsbury Academic
• Gleason, Philip (1995). Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. Oxford U.
• Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.
• Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream.
• Graeber, David (2018) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon and Schuster. 
  
Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston. Harvard Press.
• Hamilton, Laura T. and Kelly Nielson (2021) Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities
Hampel, Robert L. (2017). Fast and Curious: A History of Shortcuts in American Education. Rowman & Littlefield.
• Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement
• Keats, John (1965) The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.
  
• Kelchen, Robert. (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Kezar, A., DePaola, T, and Scott, D. The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. Johns Hopkins Press. 
• Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street: The Transformation of For-profit Higher Education
• Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Crown. 
• Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. Harper Perennial.
  
• Labaree, David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Labaree, David (1997) How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education, Yale University Press.
  
• Lafer, Gordon (2004). The Job Training Charade. Cornell University Press.  
• Loehen, James (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me. The New Press. 
  
• Lohse, Andrew (2014).  Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: A Memoir.  Thomas Dunne Books. 
  
• Lucas, C.J. American higher education: A history. (1994).
• Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Penguin Press.
• Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.
  
• Mandery, Evan (2022) . Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us. New Press. 
  
• Marti, Eduardo (2016). America's Broken Promise: Bridging the Community College Achievement Gap. Excelsior College Press. 
  
• Mettler, Suzanne 'Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. Basic Books. (2014)
Morris, Dan and Harry Targ (2023). From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University: Essays in the Transformation of Higher Education. 
• Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.
• Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them.
• Paulsen, M. and J.C. Smart (2001). The Finance of Higher Education: Theory, Research, Policy & Practice.  Agathon Press. 
• Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing. 
• Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.
• Roth, G. (2019) The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility. Pluto Press
• Ruben, Julie. The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality. University Of Chicago Press. (1996).
• Rudolph, F. (1991) The American College and University: A History.
• Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.
  
• Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students.
• Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy. Cornell University Press. 
• Simpson, Christopher (1999). Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War. New Press.
  
• Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education.
• Stein, Sharon (2022). Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education, Johns Hopkins Press. 
• Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Harvard University Press. 
• Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture. 
• Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. The University of Chicago Press. 
• Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. Basic Books
• Taylor, Barret J. and Brendan Cantwell (2019). Unequal Higher Education: Wealth, Status and Student Opportunity. Rutgers University Press.
• Thelin, John R. (2019) A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
• Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy: Unionizing Adjunct Faculty in America. Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld. Simon and Schuster.
  
• Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much.
• Veysey Lawrence R. (1965).The emergence of the American university.
• Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education
• Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor. 
• Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure: For-Profit Colleges and the Closing of the Conservative Mind. Cypress House.
• Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities. 
• Winks, Robin (1996). Cloak and Gown:Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961. Yale University Press.
  
• Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.  
• Zaloom, Caitlin (2019).  Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost. Princeton University Press. 
• Zemsky, Robert, Susan Shaman, and Susan Campbell Baldridge (2020). The College Stress Test:Tracking Institutional Futures across a Crowded Market. Johns Hopkins University Press. 

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

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

 College Choice and Career Planning Tools

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

Innovation and Reform

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

Higher Education Policy

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

Data Sources

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

Trade publications

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