Hyper-Deregulation and the College Meltdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sources

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

A Century of American Exploitation: Oil, Crypto, and the Struggle for Latin America’s Universities

Latin America—a region of thirty-three countries stretching from Mexico through Central and South America and across the Caribbean—has spent more than a century fighting against foreign exploitation. Its universities, which should anchor local prosperity, cultural autonomy, and democratic life, have instead been repeatedly reshaped by foreign corporations, U.S. government interests, global lenders, and now crypto speculators. Yet the region’s history is also defined by persistent, courageous resistance, led overwhelmingly by students, faculty, and Indigenous communities.

Understanding today’s educational crisis in Latin America requires tracing this long arc of exploitation—and the struggle to build systems rooted in equity rather than extraction.

1900s–1930s: Bananas, Oil, and the Rise of the “Banana Republics”

Early in the 20th century, American corporations established vast profit-making empires in Latin America. United Fruit Company—today’s Chiquita Banana—dominated land, labor, and politics across Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Standard Oil and Texaco secured petroleum concessions in Venezuela and Ecuador, laying foundations for decades of foreign control that extracted immense wealth while leaving behind environmental devastation, as seen in Texaco’s toxic legacy in the Ecuadorian Amazon between 1964 and 1992.

Universities were bent toward these foreign interests. Agricultural programs were geared toward serving plantation economies, not local farmers. Engineering and geological research aligned with extractive industries, not community development.

Resistance did emerge. Student groups in Guatemala and Costa Rica formed part of early anti-oligarchic movements, linking national sovereignty to university reform. Their demands echoed global currents of democratization. Evidence of these early student-led struggles appears in archival materials and Latin American scholarship on university reform, and culminates in the influential 1918 Córdoba Manifesto in Argentina—a radical declaration that attacked oligarchic, colonial universities and demanded autonomy, co-governance, and public responsibility.

1940s–1980s: Coups, Cold War Interventions, and the Deepening of U.S. Oil Interests

During the Cold War, exploitation intensified. In Guatemala, the CIA-backed overthrow of democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 protected United Fruit’s land holdings. Universities were purged or militarized, and critical scholars were exiled or killed.

In Chile, the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende—supported by American corporate giants such as ITT and Anaconda Copper—ushered in a brutal dictatorship. Under Augusto Pinochet, thousands were murdered, tortured, or disappeared, while the Chicago Boys imported radical neoliberal reforms that privatized everything, including the higher education system.

Throughout the region, oil deals disproportionately favored American companies. Mexico and Venezuela saw petroleum wealth siphoned off through arrangements that benefited foreign investors while leaving universities underfunded and politically surveilled. Scholarship critical of foreign intervention was marginalized, while programs feeding engineers and economists to multinational firms were expanded.

Student resistance reached historic proportions. Chilean students and faculty formed the core of the anti-dictatorship movement. Mexico’s students rose in 1968, demanding democracy and university autonomy before being massacred in Tlatelolco. CIA declassified documents reveal that student uprisings across Latin America in the early 1970s were so widespread that U.S. intelligence considered them a regional threat.

1990s–2000s: Neoliberalism, Privatization, and the Americanization of Higher Education

In the 1990s, neoliberalism swept the region under pressure from Washington, the IMF, and the World Bank. After NAFTA, Mexico’s universities became increasingly aligned with corporate labor pipelines. In Brazil, Petrobras’ partnerships with American firms helped reshape engineering curricula. Private universities and for-profit models proliferated across the region, echoing U.S. higher ed corporatization.

Hugo Chávez captured the broader sentiment of resistance when he declared that public services—including education—cannot be privatized without violating fundamental rights.

Students fought back across Latin America. In Argentina and Brazil they contested tuition hikes and privatization. In Venezuela, the debate shifted toward whether oil revenue should fund tuition-free universities.

Indigenous Exclusion, Racism, and the Colonial Foundations of Inequality

One of the greatest challenges in understanding Latin American education is acknowledging the deep racial and ethnic stratification that predates U.S. exploitation but has been exacerbated by it. Countries like Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Guatemala have large Indigenous populations that, to this day, receive the worst education—much like Native American communities relegated to underfunded reservation schools in the United States.

Racism remains powerful. Whiter populations enjoy greater economic and educational access. University admission is shaped by class and color. These divisions are not accidental; they are a machinery of control.

There have been important exceptions. Under President Rafael Correa, Ecuador built hundreds of new schools, including Siglo XXI and Millennium Schools, and expanded public education access. In Mexico, the 2019 constitutional reform strengthened Indigenous rights, including commitments to culturally relevant education. Bolivia—whose population is majority Indigenous—has promoted Indigenous languages, judicial systems, and education structures.

But progress is fragile. Austerity, IMF conditionalities, and elite resistance have led to cutbacks, school closures, and renewed privatization across the region. The study you provided on Ecuador documents Indigenous ambivalence, even hostility, toward Correa’s universal education plan—revealing how colonial wounds, cultural erasure, and distrust of state power complicate reform and provide openings for divide-and-conquer strategies long exploited by ruling classes.

These contradictions deepen when Indigenous movements—rightfully demanding no mining, no oil extraction, and protection of ancestral lands—collide with leftist governments reliant on resource extraction to fund public services. This tension is especially acute in Ecuador and Bolivia.

2010s–Present: Crypto Colonialism and a New Frontier of Exploitation

Cryptocurrency has opened a new chapter in Latin America’s long history of foreign-driven experimentation. El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin in 2021, promoted by President Nayib Bukele, transformed the country into a speculative test lab. Bukele has now spent more than $660 million in U.S. dollars on crypto, according to investigative reporting from InSight Crime. Universities rushed to create blockchain programs that primarily serve international investors rather than Salvadoran students.

In Venezuela, crypto became a survival tool amid hyperinflation and economic collapse. Yet foreign speculators profited while universities starved. Student groups warned that crypto research was being weaponized to normalize economic chaos and distract from public-sector deterioration.

Resistance has grown. Salvadoran students have protested the Bitcoin law, demanding that public resources focus on infrastructure, health, and education. Venezuelan students call for rebuilding social programs rather than chasing speculative financial technologies.

Contemporary Student Resistance: 2010s–2020s

Across the region, student movements remain powerful. The Chilean Winter of 2011–2013 demanded free, quality public education and challenged Pinochet’s neoliberal legacy. The movement culminated in the 2019 uprising, where education reform was central.

Mexico’s UNAM students continue to resist corruption, tuition hikes, gender violence, and the encroachment of corporate and foreign interests. The 1999–2000 UNAM strike remains one of the longest in modern higher education.

Colombian students have forced governments to negotiate and invest billions in public universities, framing their struggle as resistance to neoliberal austerity shaped by U.S. policy.

Argentina continues to face massive austerity-driven cuts, sparking protests in 2024–2025 reminiscent of earlier waves of resistance. Uruguay’s Tupamaros movement—largely student-led—remains a historical touchstone.

Every country in Latin America has experienced student uprisings. They reflect a truth that Paulo Freire, exiled from Brazil for teaching critical pedagogy, understood deeply: education can either liberate or oppress. Authoritarians, privatizers, and foreign capital prefer the latter, and they act accordingly.

Today’s Regional Education Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the system into further crisis. Children in Latin America and the Caribbean lost one out of every two in-person school days between 2020 and 2022. Learning poverty now exceeds 50 percent. Entire generations risk permanent economic loss and civic disenfranchisement.

Infrastructure is collapsing. Rural and Indigenous communities suffer the worst conditions. Public investment is chronically insufficient because governments are trapped in cycles of debt repayment to international lenders. Ecuador has not seen a major public-investment program in a decade, as austerity and IMF repayments dominate national budgets.

The result is a system starved of resources and increasingly vulnerable to privatization schemes—including U.S.-style online coursework, ideological “instruction kits,” and for-profit degree mills.

Latin American Universities as Battlegrounds for Sovereignty

Latin America’s universities are shaped by the same forces that have dominated the region’s history: oil extraction, agribusiness, foreign capital, neoliberalism, structural racism, debt, and now crypto speculation. Yet universities have also been homes to transformation, rebellion, cultural resurgence, and hope.

Across more than a century, students—Indigenous, Afro-descendant, mestizo, working-class—have been the region’s fiercest defenders of public education and national sovereignty. Their resistance continues today, from Quito to Buenos Aires, from Mexico City to Santiago.

For readers of the Higher Education Inquirer, the lesson is clear: the struggle for higher education in Latin America is inseparable from the struggle for democracy, racial justice, Indigenous autonomy, and freedom from foreign domination. The region’s ruling elites and international lenders understand that an educated public is dangerous, which is why they starve, privatize, and discipline public schools. Students understand the opposite: that education is power, and that power must be reclaimed.

The next chapter—especially in countries like Ecuador—will depend on whether students, teachers, and communities can defend public education against the dual forces that have undermined it for more than a century: privatizers and fascists.

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Sources (Selection)

National Security Archive, CIA Declassified Documents (1971)
InSight Crime reporting on El Salvador Bitcoin expenditures
Luciani, Laura. “Latin American Student Movements in the 1960s.” Historia y Memoria (2019)
The Córdoba Manifesto (1918)
UNESCO, World Bank data on learning poverty (2024)
Latin American studies on United Fruit, Standard Oil, Texaco/Chevron in Ecuador
LASA Forum: Analysis of Indigenous responses to Correa’s education reforms
Periodico UNAL: “The Student Rebellion: Córdoba and Latin America”
Multiple regional news sources on Argentina’s 2024–2025 education protests

Higher Education and Its Complicity in U.S. Empire

For more than a century, U.S. higher education has been intertwined with American empire. Universities have served as ideological partners, intelligence hubs, policy workshops, and training grounds for the managers of U.S. global power. When Washington supports authoritarian allies, fuels regional conflicts, or looks away during humanitarian disasters, the academy rarely stands apart. Instead, it aligns itself—through silence, research partnerships, and selective outrage—with the priorities of the federal government and the corporations that profit from U.S. foreign policy.

Recent U.S. actions in Venezuela, Ukraine, Yemen, South Sudan, and Palestine reveal how deeply embedded this pattern has become.

In Venezuela, the United States pursued years of sanctions, covert pressure, and diplomatic isolation as part of a regime-change strategy. Throughout this period, universities repeated a narrow range of policy narratives promoted by the State Department and U.S.-aligned think tanks. Panels and conferences elevated experts connected to defense contractors, oil interests, and government-funded NGOs, while the humanitarian consequences of sanctions and the legality of U.S. interference were often ignored. The atmosphere of academic neutrality masked a clear alignment with Washington’s objectives.

Universities also showed a troubling degree of complicity during Russia’s assault on Ukraine, a war marked by the systematic killing of civilians, mass displacement, and the kidnapping and forced transfer of Ukrainian children into Russia. Even after international human rights organizations and war-crimes investigators documented atrocities, some U.S. institutions maintained partnerships with Russian universities aligned with the Kremlin, accepted visiting scholars linked to state propaganda outlets, or avoided direct condemnation of Putin’s actions for fear of disrupting scientific or financial relationships. In certain cases, academic centers framed the invasion as a “complex geopolitical dispute” rather than a brutal, unilateral attack on a sovereign population, allowing Russian narratives about NATO, Western “provocation,” or Ukrainian illegitimacy to seep into public programming. While some campuses cut ties, others hesitated, revealing how financial incentives, research networks, and institutional caution can blunt moral clarity even in the face of internationally verified crimes against civilians and children.

Higher education’s relationship with the Gulf states adds another dimension to this complicity. As Saudi Arabia waged a catastrophic war in Yemen—with U.S. weapons, logistical support, and diplomatic protection—American universities deepened their financial partnerships with Saudi and Emirati institutions. Engineering programs, medical schools, cybersecurity labs, and energy research centers accepted major gifts and expanded joint research agreements. Few leaders questioned these ties, even as human rights groups documented atrocities in Yemen or as the UAE’s role in proxy conflicts, including episodes in South Sudan, came into sharper focus. Protecting revenue streams took precedence over confronting abuses committed by powerful allies.

Nowhere is the failure of higher education more visible than in its response to Israel’s assault on Gaza. As civilian deaths soared and international human rights organizations sounded alarms about the scale and intent of the military campaign, most universities responded with repression rather than reflection. Administrators disciplined student protesters, sanctioned faculty for political speech, and issued public statements carefully aligned with prevailing U.S. political positions. Research partnerships with Israeli institutions linked to defense industries persisted without scrutiny. Universities that once examined apartheid with clarity struggled to acknowledge parallels when the subject was Palestine. Donor sensitivities, political pressures, and fear of congressional retaliation overwhelmed any commitment to moral consistency or academic freedom.

The same institutional behavior is likely if U.S. policy shifts in East Asia. Should Washington move toward accommodating the People’s Republic of China’s ambitions regarding Taiwan—whether through diplomatic recalibration or reduced willingness to intervene—universities will likely adapt quickly. The history of U.S.-China normalization in the 1970s showed how fast higher education can reorient itself when geopolitical winds change. Partnerships, narratives, and research agendas would shift to align with new federal signals, demonstrating again that universities follow the imperatives of state power more readily than they challenge them.

The deeper issue is structural. U.S. higher education relies on federal research funding, defense and intelligence partnerships, corporate relationships, overseas investment programs, and philanthropic networks shaped by geopolitical interests. Endowments are tied to global markets that profit from conflict. Study-abroad and academic exchange programs depend on diplomatic priorities. Administrators understand that openly challenging U.S. foreign policy—from Venezuela to Ukraine, from Yemen to Gaza—can threaten institutional stability and funding. Silence or selective engagement becomes the safest administrative posture.

If the academy hopes to reclaim its integrity, it must learn to confront rather than replicate state power. That requires transparency about foreign funding and defense contracts, protection for dissenting scholars and students, genuine engagement with global South perspectives, and ethical evaluation of partnerships with authoritarian governments. Universities cannot prevent wars, but they can refuse to serve as intellectual and financial enablers of violence.

Until such changes occur, higher education will remain entangled in the machinery of U.S. empire, complicit not through passivity but through the routine normalization of policies that inflict suffering around the world.

 
Sources

Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch; United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; U.S. Congressional Research Service; Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft; Brown University’s Costs of War Project; Washington Post and New York Times reporting on U.S. sanctions and foreign policy; Investigations by the Associated Press, Reuters, and Al Jazeera on Yemen, Gaza, Venezuela, and South Sudan; HEI archives and independent higher education researchers.

Remembering SNCC and CORE

To remember CORE (est. 1942 in Chicago) and SNCC (est. 1960) is to remember a democracy built not by elites but by everyday people—students, sharecroppers, domestic workers, bus drivers, teachers, and the poor and working class across the Jim Crow South and the segregated North. It is to remember Ella Baker’s wisdom, Diane Nash’s determination, Bob Moses’s quiet power, Fannie Lou Hamer’s moral force, James Farmer’s strategic brilliance—and also the thousands of unnamed organizers who risked everything without ever appearing in a textbook, a documentary, or a university lecture hall. Their names may not be widely known, but their work forms the backbone of the freedom struggle.

CORE and SNCC and were never celebrity movements. They were people-powered, grassroots engines of democracy. They were built by individuals who knocked on doors in rural counties where Black voter registration hovered near zero; who faced armed sheriffs, Klan mobs, and white citizens’ councils; who farmed during the day and attended movement meetings at night; who ferried activists to safe houses; who housed Freedom Riders despite threats of arson and lynching; who cooked for mass meetings; who walked into county courthouses where their presence alone was an act of political defiance. These unnamed contributors shaped history as much as the well-known leaders, and their invisibility in public memory is itself a measure of how selectively the United States remembers the struggle for justice.

Ella Baker insisted from the beginning that the movement’s strength rested in ordinary people discovering their own power. That is why she pushed for “group-centered leadership,” refusing the myth that liberation depends on a single, heroic figure. Her practice of listening deeply—and her belief that the least recognized people held the deepest wisdom—permeated SNCC’s organizing culture. It is a challenge to institutions today, especially universities that still cling to hierarchical models of governance and expertise.

CORE’s early commitment to interracial, nonviolent direct action emerged from a similar belief in collective action. Its activists—people like James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, and George Houser—helped introduce the tactics that would soon reverberate across the nation: sit-ins, freedom rides, boycotts, and jail-ins. CORE’s work in northern cities also exposed the hypocrisy of institutions—including universities—that claimed moral high ground while upholding segregation in housing, employment, and policing.

SNCC’s field secretaries—Charles McDew, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, and Prathia Hall, and so many others—did work that higher education still struggles to fully comprehend. Their organizing went far beyond protest; it involved listening to community elders, teaching literacy classes, building independent political organizations, challenging disenfranchisement at every level, and nurturing local leadership. Behind each of those actions were dozens of unnamed individuals who opened their homes, shared their limited resources, and stood guard against retaliation.

Remembering the unnamed is not sentimental. It is foundational. The freedom struggle was sustained by people whose names were never printed, whose stories never made the evening news, and whose families bore the consequences. Many were fired from their jobs, evicted from their homes, or harassed by police. Some disappeared from public life after the movement years, carrying trauma with little public recognition or support. Their sacrifices made the Civil Rights Movement possible, and higher education owes them a debt it has never acknowledged.

Today’s universities still wrestle with the structures the movement confronted: racialized inequality, policing, surveillance, donor influence, and hierarchical authority. Many of the same dynamics SNCC and CORE challenged—white paternalism, economic exploitation, authoritarian governance—are alive in campus politics and in the broader “college meltdown,” where austerity, privatization, and predatory actors erode public trust and opportunity.

To honor SNCC, CORE, and the thousands of unnamed organizers is to affirm that democracy emerges from the ground up. It means recognizing that real change requires more than symbolic gestures or PR-friendly “initiatives.” It demands revisiting Ella Baker’s core insight: strong people do not need strong leaders—they need structures that cultivate collective power.

Remembering them means acknowledging that the freedoms we now take for granted—voting rights, desegregation, access to education—were won not by institutions, but by people who challenged institutions. And it means seeing the present clearly: that grassroots organizing, from campus movements to community struggles, remains essential to confronting the crises of inequality, debt, climate, surveillance, and governance that define our era.

To remember SNCC and CORE is to remember not just the famous, but the countless unnamed: the hosts, the watchers, the singers, the marchers, the jailmates, the caretakers, the strategists, the frightened but determined teenagers, the elders who said “yes,” and the ones who insisted that freedom was worth the risk. Their legacy is the true measure of democracy—and a guide for what higher education must become if it is to serve justice rather than power.

Sources
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s.
Thomas F. Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice.
Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.
James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement.
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years.
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.
Danielle L. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street.
SNCC Digital Gateway, Duke University.

Nonviolent Resistance in the Trump Era: Why Satire, Journalism, and Marches Are Not Enough

In moments of democratic crisis, societies often turn to familiar tools: satire, journalism, and public demonstrations. Today—amid intensifying authoritarian rhetoric, rising political violence, and fraying institutions—forms of dissent like South Park, The New York Times, and the No Kings marches reflect a country struggling to assert democratic values.

These efforts matter. But they are not enough.

If democracy is to endure, millions—not just artists, reporters, or marchers—must engage in coordinated, creative, nonviolent resistance. And they must do so in solidarity.

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Satire as Resistance: When South Park Breaks the Spell

For decades, South Park has peeled back the layers of American political absurdity. In the Trump era, its depictions of autocratic posturing and the cult of personality have helped audiences see through the spectacle.

But satire remains commentary, not coordination. It can spark awareness, but it cannot restrain authoritarian power on its own.

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Journalistic Resistance: The New York Times and the Weight of Truth

The New York Times has played a crucial role in exposing corruption, extremism, disinformation networks, and democratic backsliding. Its reporters have often faced harassment and threats simply for revealing the truth.

Yet journalism cannot mobilize the public by itself. Facts require action—and action requires organization.

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Street Resistance: The No Kings Marches and Public Defiance

The No Kings marches—an umbrella for decentralized, anti-authoritarian street demonstrations—represent a powerful expression of nonviolent public resistance. Emerging across cities and campuses, these marches assert a simple moral principle: no leader, party, or faction is entitled to unchecked power.

Their message is clear:

• Democracy requires constraints.

• Political leaders are not royalty.

• The people, not a single figure, hold ultimate sovereignty.

The No Kings marches reclaim public space from fear and resignation. They remind communities that resistance does not require weapons—only bodies, voices, and courage.

But marches alone cannot build the long-term structures needed to protect democracy. They ignite momentum; they do not sustain it without broader collective support.

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Universities Have Failed to Defend Democratic Dissent

Historically, universities were vital sites of moral courage and mass mobilization. Today, however, university presidents have aggressively squelched campus protests—through police intervention, restrictive rules, suspensions, and pressure from wealthy donors.

This chilling effect has not recovered. Student activism remains suppressed at the very moment when democratic engagement is most essential.

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The Growing Possibility of a General Strike

As institutional stability deteriorates, Americans increasingly discuss the possibility of a General Strike—a nationwide, multi-sector refusal to work until political abuses are addressed. General strikes have played decisive roles in democratic movements around the world.

A U.S. General Strike could:

• Halt the economic machinery that enables authoritarian governance

• Force political leaders to negotiate rather than intimidate

• Demonstrate the nonviolent power of ordinary workers

The concept is no longer fringe. It is a rational response to a political system in crisis.

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Another Government Shutdown: A Flashpoint for Resistance

The threat of another federal government shutdown exposes a political class willing to damage the public in pursuit of ideological power. Shutdowns harm millions of workers, families, and communities.

But they also clarify a crucial truth:
the government depends entirely on ordinary people showing up.

If a shutdown occurs, it could accelerate conversations about coordinated nonviolent resistance—boycotts, demonstrations, strikes—and push more Americans to see the system’s fragility and their own collective power.

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Nonviolent Resistance Must Be Mass-Based and Rooted in Solidarity

Satire, journalism, and street marches each contribute to political consciousness. But democratic survival requires:

• Coordinated labor action, including sector-wide strikes

• Mass protests, sit-ins, and civil disobedience

• Boycotts and divestment aimed at authoritarian enablers

• Digital resistance against disinformation

• Local mutual aid networks and coalition-building

• Cross-racial, cross-class, and interfaith solidarity

Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires collective, creative noncooperation with authoritarian drift.

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Solidarity Is the Strategy

Authoritarianism thrives on isolation and fear.
Nonviolent movements thrive on courage and connection.

Satire can puncture illusions.
Journalism can expose wrongdoing.
The No Kings marches can reclaim public space.
Students can still spark moral clarity—if administrators allow it.
Workers can stop the machine entirely.

But only mass, sustained, nonviolent solidarity can protect democracy now.

And the moment to act is now.

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Sources on Nonviolent Movements and Civil Resistance

Books & Academic Works

• Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action

• Erica Chenoweth & Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works

• Jonathan Pinckney, From Dissent to Democracy

• Jamila Raqib & Gene Sharp, Self-Liberation

• Srdja Popović, Blueprint for Revolution

• Peter Ackerman & Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful

Research Centers & Reports

• International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC)

• Albert Einstein Institution

• U.S. Institute of Peace publications on civil resistance

• Freedom House reports on democratic erosion

Historical Case Studies

• U.S. Civil Rights Movement

• Solidarity Movement (Poland)

• People Power Revolution (Philippines)

• Anti-Apartheid Struggle (South Africa)

• Selected Arab Spring movements

Entangled Frontiers: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the UAE, South Sudan, and the Israel-Palestine Arena — Implications for Higher Education, Censorship, and Global Governance

The global higher education landscape is increasingly shaped by conflicts, diplomacy, and shifting regional alliances. The relationships among Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), South Sudan, and the Israel-Palestine conflict highlight the interconnections between geopolitics, humanitarian crises, and the responsibilities of universities as institutions of knowledge, ethics, and justice. These contexts influence not only student mobility and research collaboration but also institutional priorities, funding flows, and academic freedom. Understanding the intersection of geopolitics and higher education is essential for institutions seeking to engage globally with integrity, equity, and impact.

For scholars and administrators, these regions exemplify the challenge of balancing opportunity and risk. Research and student engagement opportunities abound in humanitarian crises, fragile states, and post-conflict zones, yet these are embedded in complex political and ethical landscapes. Additionally, the growing pressures on American universities to navigate internal censorship, legislative constraints, and donor-influenced agendas have profound implications for their global credibility and ability to engage abroad. This article explores each of these regions in depth, examines the cross-cutting implications for higher education, and discusses the domestic pressures in U.S. higher education that shape international engagement.

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Saudi Arabia and Yemen

The war in Yemen has devastated the nation, creating one of the most severe humanitarian crises in recent history. Civilian infrastructure has been destroyed, millions of people have been displaced, and famine and disease threaten vast swathes of the population. Saudi Arabia, as the leading actor in the coalition intervening in Yemen, has faced both international criticism and pressure to negotiate. Recent diplomatic initiatives have suggested that Riyadh may be seeking to recalibrate its involvement, including attempts to engage Houthi representatives in peace talks. For higher education institutions, these shifts have important implications for student mobility, research opportunities, and refugee education programs. Yemen's crisis represents not only a humanitarian emergency but also a research frontier in global health, humanitarian logistics, and post-conflict educational reconstruction.

Saudi Arabia’s position on Israel adds another layer of complexity for global academic partnerships. The Kingdom continues to insist that it will not normalize relations with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state. This position affects regional alliances, funding priorities, and the willingness of other states to engage in collaborative academic initiatives. For universities, this reality translates into both opportunities and constraints. Scholarship programs, research funding, and institutional partnerships linked to Saudi Arabia may be influenced by the Kingdom’s foreign policy priorities. Institutions engaging with Yemen must navigate a humanitarian context that is deeply intertwined with the diplomatic posturing of a regional superpower.

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The United Arab Emirates

The UAE has emerged as a significant regional actor, leveraging economic strength to expand its influence across Africa, the Red Sea corridor, and the Middle East. Its normalisation with Israel through the Abraham Accords marked a historic diplomatic shift in Arab-Israeli relations, yet the UAE has simultaneously articulated clear objections to unilateral Israeli annexation plans in the West Bank. In Africa, the UAE has deepened ties with South Sudan and other fragile states through financial agreements, including banking cooperation and long-term oil-backed loans. These interventions exemplify how foreign investment, diplomacy, and regional security concerns intersect in ways that directly affect higher education.

For universities, the UAE represents both opportunity and caution. Institutions can engage with new funding streams, branch campuses, and international partnerships facilitated by Gulf state investment. At the same time, ethical considerations are paramount. Funding sources tied to conflict zones, extractive economic deals, or contested geopolitical agendas require careful institutional scrutiny. Universities must develop frameworks that incorporate conflict sensitivity, ethical risk assessment, and transparency. The UAE’s dual role as a facilitator of academic mobility and a participant in contested geopolitical spaces underscores the complexity of engagement in regions influenced by external power.

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South Sudan

South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, has struggled to stabilize since its independence in 2011. Recurring conflict, economic dependence on oil, and weak governance structures have hindered the development of higher education infrastructure. Agreements with the UAE, including long-term oil-backed loans and financial cooperation, highlight the influence of foreign investment on the state’s trajectory and, by extension, its educational system.

For higher education, South Sudan presents both a critical research site and an urgent development need. Universities can contribute to capacity-building, curriculum development, and scholarship programs for displaced or return diaspora students. Research in post-conflict governance, peace studies, and resource management can inform broader academic understanding of fragile states. Yet these opportunities come with ethical and practical complexities. Partnerships with South Sudanese institutions must navigate the implications of resource-linked foreign investment, the risk of perpetuating inequality, and the fragility of governance structures. Universities engaging in South Sudan must balance their commitment to education with a nuanced understanding of political and economic realities.

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Israel and Palestine

The Israel-Palestine conflict continues to shape the global higher education discourse, affecting student mobility, refugee education, research collaborations, and institutional partnerships. Saudi Arabia’s insistence that normalization with Israel is contingent upon Palestinian statehood and East Jerusalem as its capital remains a critical point of leverage in regional diplomacy. The UAE, despite having normalized with Israel, continues to assert that Israeli annexation of the West Bank represents a “red line” that could destabilize the region.

For universities, this context presents both opportunities and ethical challenges. Engaging with Palestinian students, hosting refugee scholars, and conducting research on human rights and humanitarian crises are vital areas of academic intervention. At the same time, institutions must navigate funding sources, regional political sensitivities, and reputational risks. Academic freedom in research on Israel and Palestine is often contested, both abroad and domestically in the United States, where political and donor pressures shape what research is feasible, safe, or fundable.

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Censorship and Academic Freedom in U.S. Higher Education

Recent developments in American higher education highlight the fragility of academic freedom, which directly affects international engagement. Surveys indicate that over one-third of U.S. faculty perceive a decline in academic freedom, and approximately 70% report self-censorship on topics such as the Israel-Palestine conflict. Legislation in several states, framed under terms like “viewpoint diversity” or “campus neutrality,” imposes constraints on curriculum, speech, faculty tenure, and university governance. These pressures are compounded by donor influence, administrative oversight, and the politicization of higher education.

Censorship and self-censorship are not abstract concerns; they have tangible impacts on research agendas, global partnerships, and the capacity of universities to host refugee or international scholars. Institutions with programs in global health, humanitarian response, Middle East studies, or post-conflict development must contend with domestic pressures that may limit the scope of inquiry or public engagement. The erosion of academic freedom in the United States thus has a direct effect on the credibility and effectiveness of universities abroad, as it mirrors, in some respects, the constraints faced by institutions in fragile or authoritarian states.

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Cross-Cutting Themes

Several themes cut across these regional and domestic contexts. First, conflict and displacement in Yemen, South Sudan, and Palestine create urgent educational needs for refugees and internally displaced scholars. Universities must develop programs that provide access, mentorship, and flexible pathways to education. Second, foreign investment and resource-linked funding—from the UAE in South Sudan to Saudi-backed initiatives in Yemen—underscore the ethical complexities of international partnerships. Transparency, due diligence, and conflict-sensitive frameworks are essential. Third, diplomatic realignments, including the Abraham Accords and evolving Saudi-Israel relations, create new corridors for collaboration but also introduce geopolitical risk. Fourth, domestic censorship and political pressures in the U.S. affect research capacity, ethical engagement, and the freedom to examine contentious topics, directly influencing global credibility.

Finally, structural inequality and systemic injustice are central concerns. Funding flows, research agendas, and student access are all mediated by power structures that can perpetuate inequities. Universities must be conscious of whose voices are amplified, whose perspectives are sidelined, and how partnerships with conflict-affected states influence the production of knowledge. Ethical global engagement requires institutions to address these imbalances proactively.

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References & Sources

1. PEN America, “New Report Unveils Alarming Tactics in Censorship of Higher Education,” pen.org

2. Times of India, “Is Academic Freedom on the Decline? 35% of US College Professors Say Yes,” timesofindia.indiatimes.com

3. Times of Israel, “Faculty Survey Reveals Fear, Self-Censorship at US Universities,” timesofisrael.com

4. Associated Press, “Under Threat from Trump, Columbia University Agrees to Policy Changes,” apnews.com

5. The Guardian, “US Universities’ Faculty Unite to Defend Academic Freedom After Trump’s Attacks,” theguardian.com

6. Le Monde, “UC Berkeley, the US Capital of Free Speech, Stands Firm Against Trump,” lemonde.fr

South University Faces $35.4 Million Balloon Payment Amid Limited Oversight

[Editor's note: On October 29, 2025, the Higher Education Inquirer emailed South University for a status update. South University did not respond. On November 1, 2025, Benjamin DeGweck replaced Steven Yoho as CEO and Chancellor.]

South University, a former for-profit college network now operating under nonprofit ownership, is facing a $35 million balloon payment this month on a loan obtained through the Federal Reserve’s Main Street Lending Program. The looming debt and the school’s status on Heightened Cash Monitoring (HCM) raise questions about financial stability and the adequacy of regulatory oversight in the nonprofit higher education sector.

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A Heavy Loan Load

According to publicly available financial statements, South University carries more than $35 million in long-term debt maturing this month, part of a $50 million Main Street loan issued during the COVID-19 pandemic. The approaching balloon payment represents a major financial test for an institution already under federal scrutiny and struggling with declining enrollment.

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Heightened Cash Monitoring—But Limited Oversight

South University is currently listed under Heightened Cash Monitoring (HCM) by the U.S. Department of Education, a status that requires extra documentation before federal aid funds are released. While the designation signals potential financial or compliance issues, it does not necessarily result in strong day-to-day oversight.

The school remains accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC)—an accreditor known for minimal intervention in institutional finances unless there is clear evidence of collapse. This means that despite the HCM flag, South University continues to operate with significant autonomy, even as federal and student aid dollars flow through additional administrative checks.

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A Complicated Legacy

South University’s story is deeply tied to the rise and fall of the for-profit college industry. Once part of Education Management Corporation (EDMC), the school was sold in 2017 to the ill-fated Dream Center Education Holdings (DCEH). When DCEH collapsed in 2019, the Education Principle Foundation (EPF)—a nonprofit—took over South University and The Art Institutes. South University is now an independent non-profit enterprise.  

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A Pattern of Fragile Conversions

South University’s precarious position reflects a larger trend: the conversion of failing for-profit schools into nominal nonprofits that rely on tuition, federal aid, and private service contracts to survive. These conversions often preserve the same management structures and business practices while benefiting from the public trust and tax advantages of nonprofit status.

The $35 million balloon payment highlights the risks of these financial engineering strategies—especially when public money is involved but public accountability is weak.

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What Comes Next

With the 2025 deadline approaching, South University faces a pivotal decision: refinance the Main Street loan, restructure operations, or seek new capital through other partners.

If the institution falters, students could once again be caught in the aftermath of a sector-wide collapse—echoing the failures of EDMC, DCEH, and the Art Institutes.

For now, South University continues to operate with limited transparency, under a light-touch accreditor, and with a multimillion-dollar federal debt hanging over its future.

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Sources:

• U.S. Department of Education, Heightened Cash Monitoring List (October 2025)

• Federal Reserve, Main Street Lending Program Overview

• South University financial statements (publicly available data)

• U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard

• Wikipedia, South University (accessed October 2025)

When Was Higher Education Truly a Public Good? (Glen McGhee)

Like staring at the Sun too long, that brief window in time, when higher ed was a public good, has left a permanent hole for nostalgia to leak in, becoming a massive black hole for trillions of dollars, and a blind-spot for misguided national policies and scholars alike. 

The notion that American higher education was ever a true public good is largely a myth. From the colonial colleges to the neoliberal university of today, higher education has functioned primarily as a mechanism of class reproduction and elite consolidation—with one brief, historically anomalous exception during the Cold War.

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Colonial Roots: Elite Reproduction in the New World (1636–1787)

The first American colleges—Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, and a handful of others—were founded not for the benefit of the public, but to serve narrow elite interests. Their stated missions were to train Protestant clergy and prepare the sons of wealthy white families for leadership. They operated under monopoly charters and drew funding from landowners, merchants, and slave traders.

Elihu Yale, namesake of Yale University, derived wealth from his commercial ties to the East India Company and the slave trade. Harvard’s early trustees owned enslaved people. These institutions functioned as “old boys’ clubs,” perpetuating privilege rather than promoting equality. Their educational mission was to cultivate “gentlemen fit to govern,” not citizens of a democracy.

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Private Enterprise in the Republic (1790–1860)

After independence, the number of colleges exploded—from 19 in 1790 to more than 800 by 1880—but not because of any commitment to the public good. Colleges became tools for two private interests: religious denominations seeking influence, and land speculators eager to raise property values.

Ministers often doubled as land dealers, founding small, parochial colleges to anchor towns and boost prices. State governments played a minimal role, providing funding only in times of crisis. The Supreme Court’s 1819 Dartmouth College decision enshrined institutional autonomy, shielding private colleges from state interference. Even state universities were created mainly out of interstate competition—every state needed its own to “keep up with its neighbors.”

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Gilded Age and Progressive Era: Credential Capitalism (1880–1940)

By the late 19th century, industrial capitalism had transformed higher education into a private good—something purchased for individual advancement. As family farms and small businesses disappeared, college credentials became the ticket to white-collar respectability.

Sociologist Burton Bledstein called this the “culture of professionalism.” Families invested in degrees to secure middle-class futures for their children. By the 1920s, most students attended college not to seek enlightenment, but “to get ready for a particular job.”

Elite universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton solidified their dominance through exclusive networks. C. Wright Mills later observed that America’s “power elite” circulated through these same institutions and their associated clubs. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital helps explain this continuity: elite universities convert inherited privilege into certified merit, preserving hierarchy under the guise of meritocracy.

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The Morrill Acts: Public Promise, Private Gains (1862–1890)

The Morrill Act of 1862 established land-grant colleges to promote “practical education” in agriculture and engineering. While often cited as a triumph of public-minded policy, the act’s legacy is ambivalent.

Land-grant universities were built on land expropriated from Indigenous peoples—often without compensation—and the 1890 Morrill Act entrenched segregation by mandating separate institutions for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. Even as these colleges expanded access for white working-class men, they simultaneously reinforced racial and economic hierarchies.

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Cold War Universities: The Brief Public Good (1940–1970)

For roughly thirty years, during World War II and the Cold War, American universities functioned as genuine public goods—but only because national survival seemed to depend on them.

The GI Bill opened college to millions of veterans, stabilizing the economy and expanding the middle class. Massive federal investments in research transformed universities into engines of technological and scientific innovation. The university, for a moment, was understood as a public instrument for national progress.

Yet this golden age was marred by exclusion. Black veterans were often denied GI Bill benefits, particularly in the South, where discriminatory admissions and housing policies blocked their participation. The “military-industrial-academic complex” that emerged from wartime funding created a new elite network centered on research universities like MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley.

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Neoliberal Regression: Education as a Private Commodity (1980–Present)

After 1970, the system reverted to its long-standing norm: higher education as a private good. The Cold War’s end, the tax revolt, and the rise of neoliberal ideology dismantled the postwar consensus.

Ronald Reagan led the charge—first as California governor, cutting higher education funding by 20%, then as president, slashing federal support. He argued that tuition should replace public subsidies, casting education as an individual investment rather than a social right.

Since 1980, state funding per student has fallen sharply while tuition at public universities has tripled. Students are now treated as “customers,” and universities as corporations—complete with branding departments, executive pay packages, and relentless tuition hikes.

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The Circuit of Elite Network Capital

Today, the benefits of higher education flow through a closed circuit of power that links elite universities, corporations, government agencies, and wealthy families.

1. Elite Universities consolidate wealth and prestige through research funding, patents, and endowments.

2. Corporations recruit talent and license discoveries, feeding the same institutions that produce their executives.

3. Government and Military Agencies are staffed by alumni of elite universities, reinforcing a revolving door of privilege.

4. Elite Professions—law, medicine, finance, consulting—use degrees as gatekeeping mechanisms, driving credential inflation.

5. Wealthy Families invest in elite education as a means of preserving status across generations.

What the public receives are only residual benefits—technologies and medical innovations that remain inaccessible without money or insurance.

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Elite Network Capital, Not Public Good

The idea of higher education as a public good has always been more myth than reality. For most of American history, colleges and universities have functioned as institutions of elite reproduction, not engines of democratic uplift.

Only during the extraordinary conditions of the mid-20th century—when global war and ideological conflict made mass education a national imperative—did higher education briefly align with the public interest.

Today’s universities continue to speak the language of “public good,” but their actions reveal a different truth. They serve as factories of credentialism and as nodes in an elite network that translates privilege into prestige. What masquerades as a public good is, in practice, elite network capital—a system designed not to democratize opportunity, but to manage and legitimize inequality.

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Sources:
Labaree (2017), Bledstein (1976), Bourdieu (1984, 1986), Mills (1956), Geiger (2015), Thelin (2019), and McGhee (2025).

BRICS Universities on the Rise: Prestige, Power, and the Global Student Market

The BRICS alliance—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—has emerged as both an economic and educational bloc. While the U.S., U.K., and Europe still dominate in global higher education prestige, the BRICS countries are investing billions to expand their universities’ reach, attract international students, and challenge Western dominance in research and rankings.

The Top BRICS Universities

Recent rankings—such as the “Three University Missions” framework compiled by the Association of Ranking Compilers (ARC)—consistently place Chinese and Russian universities at the top of the BRICS hierarchy.

• China: Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) consistently place among the world’s top institutions.

• Russia: Lomonosov Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University lead, followed by Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Novosibirsk State University.

• India: Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and IITs (Bombay, Delhi, Madras) stand out in engineering and science.

• Brazil: The University of São Paulo (USP) and Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) are Latin America’s strongest performers.

• South Africa: The University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand, and Stellenbosch University remain the leading African universities.

China dominates numerically, with more than 200 universities represented in BRICS rankings—far ahead of Russia (161), India (93), Brazil (55), and South Africa (fewer than 20).

Beyond Rankings: What BRICS Universities Teach

Most leading BRICS universities are heavily STEM-oriented, training future engineers, medical professionals, and scientists. This is no accident. Just as Western universities in the so-called “Golden Years of Capitalism” prepared students for the industrial revolution, BRICS institutions are preparing for the next epoch—artificial intelligence, robotics, and 5G technologies.

In China and Russia, billionaires exist, but unlike in the United States, they do not dominate university governance. The state, particularly the Party in China, sets the agenda. Education here is not a marketplace of private donors and endowments, but a tool of statecraft and long-term economic planning.

This contrasts sharply with the United States, where higher education has been weaponized as a savior narrative against China—but where the system is riddled with debt, tuition inflation, and the casualization of faculty labor. In China, university education can be tuition-free, with no debt burdens, and designed to produce graduates with immediately usable skills.

International Students and Global Reach

One of the most striking shifts is in international student enrollment, where China has become a global hub. It now hosts the third-largest number of foreign students in the world, behind only the U.S. and U.K. Unlike in the West, international students in China disproportionately choose humanities programs—over 200,000 enrolled compared to fewer than 20,000 in the U.S.

Other BRICS nations are making slower progress. Russia has seen international enrollments grow, with Ural Federal University reporting a twelvefold increase in BRICS-country students since 2012. Brazil, India, and South Africa host far fewer foreign students but are experimenting with scholarship and exchange programs to grow.

Scholarship initiatives—especially linked to China’s Belt and Road Initiative—play a central role. In 2024, 200 Ethiopian students received full scholarships to study in Chinese universities. Institutions like Harbin Institute of Technology and Beijing Institute of Technology have become magnets for students from Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East.

Extraction and Education

The rise of BRICS education cannot be separated from the global economy of extraction—extraction of minerals, extraction of information, extraction of labor, and even extraction through surveillance and coercion. The knowledge economy in BRICS nations increasingly aims to produce technologies and machines that can help, hurt, or kill—from medical robotics to military drones.

Humanities, once central to shaping citizens and culture, risk being sidelined into boutique programs or small schools, little more than hobbies for the privileged. The future of higher education, in BRICS and globally, is being reoriented toward what capitalism demands: technical skills to maintain permanent war, digital economies, and resource exploitation.

Institutional Networks and Alliances

Beyond rankings and enrollments, BRICS has established its own inter-university cooperation networks:

• BRICS Network University (BRICS-NU): A joint initiative promoting academic mobility, joint research, and shared degree programs. It is now expanding to BRICS+ countries such as Egypt, Iran, and the UAE.

• BRICS+ Universities Association (BUA): Formed in 2023 to boost student recruitment and global visibility of BRICS institutions.

These alliances are designed not only to strengthen BRICS solidarity but also to present an alternative to Western-dominated institutions like the Ivy League, Oxbridge, and the Russell Group.

Why BRICS Universities Matter

For students in the Global South, BRICS universities increasingly represent a viable alternative to costly degrees in the U.S. or U.K. The lower tuition, growing prestige, and geopolitical alignment with emerging powers make these schools attractive.

For governments, higher education has become a strategic tool of soft power. China in particular is using its universities to deepen ties with Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America. Russia also leverages education as diplomacy, especially among post-Soviet states.

But the deeper issue is that education everywhere is now shaped by global capitalism, not just national priorities. If there is to be resistance—whether to debt peonage in the U.S. or to authoritarian technocracy in China—it will need to be international, much like labor struggles have had to cross borders.

Looking Ahead

With Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE joining BRICS+ in 2024–25, the bloc’s educational footprint will grow even larger. Universities in Cairo, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi could soon be ranked alongside Peking University and Lomonosov Moscow State.

Singapore, while not a BRICS member, remains an important comparison point: its National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) routinely rank above all but the very top Chinese universities.

As the 21st century unfolds, the global higher education order is no longer confined to the West. The BRICS countries—and their universities—are carving out a new, contested space in the knowledge economy. Whether this space leads to emancipation or further domination is an open question. For now, it looks less like the liberal dream of the university and more like the epoch of the robot, alongside permanent war.

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Sources:

• ARC “Three University Missions” Rankings: brics-ratings.org

• TV BRICS: tvbrics.com

• QS BRICS Rankings 2016

• CEOWorld University Rankings (2018)

• Times Higher Education (THE) International Student Data

• BRICS Network University & BRICS+ Universities Association reports

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