Climate Denial and Conservative Amnesia: A Letter to Charlie Kirk and TPUSA

Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA have built an empire of outrage—rallying young conservatives on college campuses, feeding them culture war talking points, and mocking science in the name of “free thinking.” At the top of their hit list? Climate change. According to TPUSA, man-made global warming is a hoax, a leftist ploy to expand government, or simply not worth worrying about. But this isn’t rebellion—it’s willful ignorance. And worse, it’s a betrayal of the conservative legacy of environmental stewardship.

Let’s be clear: man-made climate change is real. It is measurable, observable, and already having devastating consequences across the planet. The science is not debatable. According to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Earth’s average surface temperature has risen more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century—largely driven by carbon emissions from human activities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which aggregates peer-reviewed science from around the world, states unequivocally that “human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”

If Charlie Kirk and TPUSA were interested in truth, they wouldn’t be spreading climate denial. They’d be listening to the 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists who confirm that this warming is caused by humans. They’d look to the Department of Defense, which recognizes climate change as a national security threat. They’d pay attention to farmers losing crops to drought, families displaced by floods and wildfires, and millions of people suffering through record-breaking heat.

In 2023, Phoenix experienced 31 straight days above 110°F. In 2024, ocean temperatures reached the highest levels ever recorded, accelerating coral bleaching and threatening global fisheries. Canadian wildfires covered U.S. cities in toxic smoke. Coastal towns face rising seas. These are not “natural cycles.” They are the direct result of burning coal, oil, and gas at unsustainable levels—driven by short-term greed and fossil fuel lobbyists.

And that brings us to a painful irony. TPUSA claims to speak for the working class, for rural Americans, and for future generations. But these are exactly the people being hit first and hardest by climate change. Farmers in Texas and Kansas are watching their yields collapse. Gulf Coast communities are being battered by stronger hurricanes. Urban neighborhoods with little tree cover and poor infrastructure are turning into deadly heat islands. Denying climate change doesn’t protect these people—it abandons them.

But perhaps the worst betrayal is ideological. TPUSA calls itself conservative. Yet real conservatism means conserving what matters—our land, our water, our air, and our future. And in this regard, the Republican Party once led the way.

It was Republican President Theodore Roosevelt who pioneered American conservation. He created national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. He didn’t call environmental protection socialism—he called it patriotism.

It was Republican Richard Nixon who signed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. He founded the Environmental Protection Agency, understanding that pollution was not just bad for nature—it was bad for people and for capitalism itself.

Even Ronald Reagan, whose presidency is often associated with deregulation, signed the 1987 Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. The result? The ozone layer began to heal—one of the greatest environmental successes in human history.

More recently, conservative leaders like Bob Inglis, Carlos Curbelo, Larry Hogan, and Susan Collins have advocated for carbon pricing, clean energy investments, and bipartisan climate action. Groups like RepublicEn, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, and the American Conservation Coalition are working to reintroduce common-sense environmentalism to the Republican movement. These are not radicals. They are conservatives who understand that freedom means nothing without a livable planet.

Young Republicans increasingly agree. Polls show that Gen Z conservatives are far more likely than older Republicans to support climate action. They’ve grown up in a world of extreme weather, mass extinction, and economic uncertainty. They know the cost of inaction. They see through the oil-funded lies.

So what exactly is TPUSA conserving? Not the environment. Not scientific integrity. Not the truth. They are conserving ignorance—and protecting the profits of ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the very fossil fuel billionaires who knew the risks of climate change in the 1970s and chose to deceive the public anyway. (See: Harvard University’s 2023 study on Exxon’s internal climate models.)

If TPUSA is serious about freedom, they must realize that freedom cannot exist without responsibility. There is no free market on a burning planet. There is no liberty when wildfires choke your air, when hurricanes destroy your home, or when heatwaves kill your grandparents.

We challenge Charlie Kirk and TPUSA not to “own the libs,” but to own the truth. Talk to climate scientists. Visit frontline communities. Debate conservatives like Bob Inglis who actually care about the world they’re leaving behind. Break the echo chamber. Lead with courage instead of trolling for clicks.

The earth does not care about your ideology. It cares about physics. And physics is winning.

Sources:

NASA – Climate Change Evidence and Causes: https://climate.nasa.gov
NOAA – Global Climate Reports: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, 2023: https://www.ipcc.ch
Harvard – Exxon’s Early Climate Models, Science, Jan 2023
U.S. Department of Defense – Climate Risk Analysis, 2022: https://www.defense.gov
Pew Research – Gen Z Republicans and Climate Change, 2023
RepublicEn – https://www.republicEn.org
American Conservation Coalition – https://www.acc.eco
Montreal Protocol overview – United Nations Environment Programme

The truth is not left or right. It is grounded in science, history, and conscience. Conservatives once led on environmental protection. They still can—if they’re brave enough to face the facts.

Pigs on Parade: The University of Phoenix IPO

Apollo Global Management and Vistria have an offer only a pig would consider: the Phoenix Education Partners IPO.

Touted by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of Montreal, Jefferies, and Apollo Global Securities, the offering of Phoenix Education Partners brings the University of Phoenix (UoPX) back to public markets—but few fans remain in the audience.

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A Decade of Decline: From Expansion to Erosion

In the early 2000s, UoPX was hailed as a pioneering force in adult education—cozy campuses near freeway exits and an advanced online infrastructure for working learners earned praise. Its founder John Sperling was seen as visionary.

But by 2010 enrollment had already begun plummeting after reaching nearly 470,000 students, and the school’s academic quality and recruiting ethics were under the microscope. Critics decried “The Matrix,” a perverse scheme where recruiters were aggressively incentivized to push enrollments—no matter the cost.

By 2018, more than 450 locations had shuttered, enrollment was down by approximately 80%, and half the remaining sites were no longer accepting new students. Even Hawaii, Jersey City, Detroit, and other major cities were on the closure list.

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Regulatory Fallout: Lawsuits, Settlements, and Borrower Defenses

From the early 2010s onward, UoPX saw an avalanche of legal scrutiny. In 2019, the FTC leveled a $191 million settlement against it for misleading advertising, including deceptive claims about job placement and corporate partnerships.

By late 2023, 73,740 borrower-defense claims had been filed by former students under federal programs. Many of these were settled under the Sweet v. Cardona class action, with estimates of the university’s potential liability ranging from $200 million to over $1 billion. Meanwhile, nearly one million debtors owed a combined $21.6 billion in student loans—about $22,000 per borrower on average.

Another flashpoint: UoPX agreed to pay $4.5 million in 2024 to settle investigations by California’s Attorney General over military-targeted recruiting tactics.

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The Ownership Unicorn: Apollo, Vistria, and Political Backing

After Apollo Global Management and the Vistria Group acquired UoPX in 2016, the school became a commodified unit in a larger private equity portfolio. The deal brought in figures like Marty Nesbitt, a political insider, as chairman—signaling strategic power play as much as financial management.

Vistria’s broader stable included Risepoint (previously Academic Partnerships), meaning both UoPX and OPM entities were controlled by one private-equity firm—drawing criticism for creating a “for-profit, online-education industrial complex.”

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The IPO Circus: “Pigs on Parade”

Enter the Phoenix Education Partners IPO, steered onto the market with all the pomp of a carnival but none of the substance. The front-line banks—Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, BMO, Jefferies, Apollo Global Securities—are being paid handsomely to dress up this distressed asset as a growth opportunity.

But here’s what those colorful floats hide:

• Collapse, not comeback. Enrollment and campus infrastructure have withered.

• Debt, not opportunity. Nearly a million debt-laden alumni owe $21.6 billion.

• Liability, not credibility. Borrower defense claims and state investigations continue to mount.

• Profit, not public good. Ownership is consolidated in private equity with political access, not academic mission.

This is a pig in parade attire. Investors are being asked to cheer for ribbon-cutting and banners, while the mud-stained hooves of exploitative business models trudge behind.

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The HEI Verdict

This IPO isn’t a pivot toward better education—it’s a rebrand of an exploitative legacy. From aggressive recruitment of vulnerable populations (“sandwich moms,” military servicemembers) to mounting legal liabilities, the University of Phoenix remains the same broken system.

Investors, regulators, and the public must not be dazzled by slick packaging. The real story is one of failed promises, students carrying lifelong debt, and private equity cashing out. In education, as in livestock, parades are meant to show off—just make sure you're not cheering at the wrong spectacle.

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Sources

• Higher Education Inquirer. Search: University of Phoenix

• Higher Education Inquirer. “The Slow-Motion Collapse of America’s Largest University” (2018)

• Higher Education Inquirer. “University of Phoenix Collapse Kept Quiet” (2019)

• Higher Education Inquirer. “Fraud Claims Against University of Phoenix” (2023)

• Higher Education Inquirer. “University of Phoenix Uses ‘Sandwich Moms’ in Recruiting” (2025)

• Higher Education Inquirer. “What Do the University of Phoenix and Risepoint Have in Common?” (2025)

• Federal Trade Commission. “FTC Obtains $191 Million Settlement from University of Phoenix” (2019)

• Sweet v. Cardona Settlement Documents (2022–2023)

• California Attorney General. “University of Phoenix to Pay $4.5 Million Over Deceptive Military Recruiting” (2024)

The Right-Wing Roots of EdTech

The modern EdTech industry is often portrayed as a neutral, innovative force, but its origins are deeply political. Its growth has been fueled by a fusion of neoliberal economics, right-wing techno-utopianism, patriarchy, and classism, reinforced by racialized inequality. One of the key intellectual architects of this vision was George Gilder, a conservative supply-side evangelist whose work glorified technology and markets as liberating forces. His influence helped pave the way for the “Gilder Effect”: a reshaping of education into a market where technology, finance, and ideology collide, often at the expense of marginalized students and workers.

The for-profit college boom provides the clearest demonstration of how the Gilder Effect operates. John Sperling’s University of Phoenix, later run by executives like Todd Nelson, was engineered as a credential factory, funded by federal student aid and Wall Street. Its model was then exported across the sector, including Risepoint (formerly Academic Partnerships), a company that sold universities on revenue-sharing deals for online programs. These ventures disproportionately targeted working-class women, single mothers, military veterans, and Black and Latino students. The model was not accidental—it was designed to exploit populations with the least generational wealth and the most limited alternatives. Here, patriarchy, classism, and racism intersected: students from marginalized backgrounds were marketed promises of upward mobility but instead left with debt, unstable credentials, and limited job prospects.

Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn of Harvard Business School popularized the concept of “disruption,” providing a respectable academic justification for dismantling public higher education. Their theory of disruptive innovation framed traditional universities as outdated and made way for venture-capital-backed intermediaries. Yet this rhetoric concealed a brutal truth: disruption worked not by empowering the disadvantaged but by extracting value from them, often reinforcing existing inequalities of race, gender, and class.

The rise and collapse of 2U shows how this ideology plays out. Founded in 2008, 2U promised to bring elite universities online, selling the dream of access to graduate degrees for working professionals. Its “flywheel effect” growth strategy relied on massive enrollment expansion and unsustainable spending. Despite raising billions, the company never turned a profit. Its high-profile acquisition of edX from Harvard and MIT only deepened its financial instability. When 2U filed for bankruptcy, it was not simply a corporate failure—it was a symptom of an entire system built on hype and dispossession.

2U also became notorious for its workplace practices. In 2015, it faced a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit after firing an enrollment director who disclosed her pregnancy. Women workers, especially mothers, were treated as expendable, a reflection of patriarchal corporate norms. Meanwhile, many front-line employees—disproportionately women and people of color—faced surveillance, low wages, and impossible sales quotas. Here the intersections of race, gender, and class were not incidental but central to the business model. The company extracted labor from marginalized workers while selling an educational dream to marginalized students, creating a cycle of exploitation at both ends of the pipeline.

Financialization extended these dynamics. Lenders like Sallie Mae and Navient, and servicers like Maximus, turned students into streams of revenue, with Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) trading debt obligations on Wall Street. Universities, including Purdue Global and University of Arizona Global, rebranded failing for-profits as “public” ventures, but their revenue-driven practices remained intact. These arrangements consistently offloaded risk onto working-class students, especially women and students of color, while enriching executives and investors.

The Gilder Effect, then, is not just about technology or efficiency. It is about reshaping higher education into a site of extraction, where the burdens of debt and labor fall hardest on those already disadvantaged by patriarchy, classism, and racism. Intersectionality reveals what the industry’s boosters obscure: EdTech has not democratized education but has deepened inequality. The failure of 2U and the persistence of predatory for-profit models are not accidents—they are the logical outcome of an ideological project rooted in conservative economics and systemic oppression.

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Sources

• EdSurge. “What a New Strategy at 2U Means for the Future of Online Higher Education.” August 5, 2022. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-08-05-what-a-new-strategy-at-2u-means-for-the-future-of-online-higher-education

• Newswire. “2U Faces Lawsuit for Pregnancy Discrimination.” June 2015. https://www.newswire.com/news/2u-faces-lawsuit-for-pregnancy-discrimination

• Christensen, Clayton M. and Michael B. Horn. Disrupting Class. McGraw-Hill, 2008.

• McMillan Cottom, Tressie. Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy. The New Press, 2017.

• Cellini, Stephanie Riegg. “For-Profit Higher Education: An Assessment of Costs and Benefits.” National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012.

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

From Philosophy to Sophistry: Why Critical Thinking Matters More Than Ever

Today, we are witnessing a troubling inversion in thought: philosophy—the love of wisdom—is increasingly being displaced by sophistry, rhetoric, and propaganda. What once served as tools for deeper understanding are now too often harnessed to manipulate opinion, defend entrenched power, and obscure reality.

The ancients recognized this danger. Socrates warned against the sophists who sold clever arguments as if they were wisdom itself, teaching young men how to win debates regardless of truth. Plato cautioned that rhetoric untethered from philosophy could become nothing more than flattery and deception. Aristotle, while systematizing rhetoric, insisted it must remain tied to logic and ethics if it was to serve the public good.

But today, these warnings are largely ignored. Rhetoric, unmoored from philosophical foundations, has become a weapon of politics, commerce, and even academia. Universities that once defended philosophy departments as central to a liberal education now shrink or eliminate them, replacing courses in logic and ethics with training in “communications,” “branding,” or “leadership.” The point is no longer truth, but persuasion—often persuasion in service of profit or political expediency.

Propaganda in Higher Education: Then and Now

The problem is not new. During the Cold War, elite universities like Harvard and Stanford became entangled in government propaganda and intelligence work. Research contracts from the Department of Defense and the CIA shaped entire fields, from area studies to behavioral psychology, with the aim of waging ideological war against communism. At Stanford, the Hoover Institution served as a pipeline between academia and Washington, producing research tailored to reinforce Cold War orthodoxy. Students were often unaware that their “objective” curricula were saturated with political agendas.

Corporate influence has also long steered academic knowledge. At the University of Chicago and Harvard Business School, neoliberal economics became dominant not because it was the most rigorous or humane, but because it was well-funded and aligned with Wall Street interests. Entire generations of business leaders were trained to see deregulation, privatization, and financialization as common sense. Meanwhile, corporations like ExxonMobil and Philip Morris poured millions into universities to shape research downplaying the harms of fossil fuels and tobacco—turning respected labs into propaganda mills under the guise of scientific inquiry.

In the for-profit sector, the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University demonstrated how higher education could be weaponized into pure marketing. Phoenix perfected the art of recruiting vulnerable students with glossy advertising campaigns while leaving many graduates with crushing debt and worthless credentials. Sophistry was not the byproduct of the system; it was the business model.

The Debt Machine as Propaganda

The rise of mass student debt in the U.S. is perhaps the clearest example of sophistry in action. For decades, policymakers, banks, and university leaders insisted that loans were an “investment” in the future. Billions of dollars in advertising, recruitment pitches, and presidential speeches told working-class families that debt was the price of opportunity, mobility, and the American Dream.

The rhetoric was powerful—but it was also false. Instead of producing universal prosperity, student loans created a new form of indenture, locking tens of millions of Americans into decades of repayment. Behind every slogan of “access” and “opportunity” was a reality of wage garnishment, ruined credit, and even Social Security checks seized from retirees.

Universities—public, private, and for-profit alike—benefited from this propaganda system. Administrators justified tuition hikes by pointing to the availability of federal loans, while politicians masked austerity and disinvestment by praising the “resilience” of students who borrowed. Sophistry covered over what philosophy might have revealed: that a system built on lifelong debt was neither just nor sustainable.

Contemporary Battles

Today, propaganda saturates every corner of higher education. Corporate partnerships with edtech firms like 2U, Coursera, and Pearson promise “innovation” while shifting costs and risks onto students and contingent faculty. DEI initiatives, while sometimes earnest, are often reduced to branding campaigns that distract from rising tuition, underfunded support services, and administrative bloat. On the other side, anti-DEI crusades, most visibly in Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis, have transformed universities like the University of Florida and New College into battlegrounds where rhetoric substitutes for governance.

Even the managerial language of “student success,” “excellence,” and “resilience” functions as propaganda. At Arizona State University, marketed as the “New American University,” branding and performance metrics often obscure deep reliance on adjunct labor and the struggles of students who leave with debt but no degree.

Why Critical Thinking Matters

In this environment, the ability to distinguish reason from sophistry is not just an academic exercise—it is essential for democratic survival. Critical thinking, logical reasoning, and ethical reflection must not be treated as luxuries reserved for philosophy majors. They are skills every student—and every citizen—requires to navigate a world saturated with propaganda.

If education has any remaining claim to a higher purpose, it is this: to cultivate minds capable of questioning, analyzing, and resisting manipulation. A society that abandons philosophy leaves itself at the mercy of those who wield rhetoric without conscience. But one that revives philosophy as a living practice of inquiry and critique can resist the slide into sophistry and reclaim some measure of truth, justice, and freedom.

The future of higher education, and perhaps democracy itself, depends on whether we choose philosophy or propaganda. The stakes could not be clearer.

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Sources

– Christopher Simpson, Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War (1999)
– Noam Chomsky & Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988)
– Derek Bok, Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education (2003)
– David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018)
– Michael Hudson, The Destiny of Civilization (2022)
– Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man (2012)
– William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite (2014)
– Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy (2017)

The Dirty World of Billionaire Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein: Profits Over People

Leon Black, the billionaire co-founder and former chief executive officer of Apollo Global Management, maintained a financial relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that lasted for years and ultimately contributed to Black’s resignation from the firm. Why should HEI be covering this old story?  Because the theme, of profits over people, is a major theme in the dirty world of business that permeates US higher education. 

Profits Over People

Apollo Global Management, the firm Black co-founded, is one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers, with hundreds of billions of dollars in assets under management across private equity, credit, and real estate. In 2016, Apollo, along with the Vistria Group and Najafi Companies, acquired Apollo Education Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, for over $1.1 billion. The University of Phoenix remains under the control of these owners and continues to operate as a for-profit institution.

Critics of private equity and venture capital in education argue that such firms are driven by short-term profitability rather than long-term institutional quality. This can lead to aggressive marketing, high tuition, cuts to faculty and staff, and diminished student outcomes. In the case of Apollo Global Management’s ownership of the University of Phoenix, concerns have persisted about the potential for cost-cutting and profit-maximizing strategies to undermine the educational mission. For-profit colleges owned by large investment firms have been accused in the past of prioritizing shareholder returns over student success, adding another layer to the public scrutiny of both Apollo and the institutions it controls.

Ties Between Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein

Between 2012 and 2017, Black paid Jeffrey Epstein approximately $158 million for what he described as financial advice, including tax and estate planning services. A March 2025 report from the Senate Finance Committee revealed that the total amount transferred to Epstein was closer to $170 million, about $12 million more than previously disclosed. In 2023, Black agreed to pay $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to settle claims that some of his payments to Epstein were used to support Epstein’s illicit operations. Black has said publicly that his association with Epstein was a “horrible mistake” and has emphasized that had he known more about Epstein’s criminal activities, he would have cut ties sooner.

Although Black has described his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein as limited, records show that Epstein became one of the original trustees of the Leon Black Family Foundation in 1997. Black also contributed a handwritten poem to a 2003 “50th birthday book” for Epstein, an item that included greetings from other prominent figures. In January 2021, following an independent review by the law firm Dechert LLP that detailed the payments to Epstein, Black announced that he would step down as CEO of Apollo Global Management.

Black has faced several legal challenges connected to allegations of sexual misconduct, many of which reference Epstein. In 2023, “Jane Doe” filed a lawsuit claiming she was assaulted by Black at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse; in April 2025, her lawyers sought to withdraw from the case. In another case, accuser Cheri Pierson alleged rape but withdrew her lawsuit in early 2024. A separate suit filed by Guzel Ganieva, which accused Black of abuse and coercion involving Epstein, was dismissed in 2023. Black has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

Sources
Business Insider
The Daily Beast
ABC News
Wikipedia – Leon Black
Wikipedia – Apollo Global Management
EdSurge
Republic Report

EANGUS: Nonprofit Shill for University of Phoenix

The Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States (EANGUS), which claims to advocate for enlisted National Guard members, has long presented itself as a supporter of military families and career advancement. However, its ongoing partnership with for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix raises serious questions about whose interests the organization truly serves.

On August 13, the University of Phoenix announced the winners of the 2025 EANGUS Future Phoenix Scholarship, which awards full tuition for bachelor’s or master’s programs to current enlisted National Guard servicemembers and their immediate family members. The winners—Nitasa Freund, Isabella Hunsicker, and John Wellington—were celebrated in press materials that emphasized the school’s commitment to veteran students.

University of Phoenix framed the scholarships as a way to “empower our members to turn their service-driven experience into academic achievement,” while EANGUS Executive Director John Gipe described the partnership as helping military members “step forward not just for the individual, but for the communities they continue to serve.”

But the reality behind these programs is far less altruistic. University of Phoenix, owned by the for-profit Apollo Global Management, has a long history of predatory recruitment practices targeting military and veteran populations. The school has faced multiple federal investigations and lawsuits over deceptive marketing, inflated job placement claims, and aggressive enrollment tactics that funnel servicemembers into costly, high-debt programs.

EANGUS’s role in promoting scholarships to the University of Phoenix illustrates how military associations can be co-opted by for-profit educational interests. By lending credibility and direct access to servicemembers, EANGUS effectively functions as a shill, steering military personnel and their families toward programs that often prioritize corporate profit over educational quality or genuine career outcomes.

Scholarship recipients’ stories, highlighted in University of Phoenix press materials, are framed as evidence of success. Nitasa Freund, a National Guard Staff Sergeant, is pursuing a master’s in criminal justice; John Wellington, a 101st Signal Battalion Company First Sergeant, is returning to higher education after decades of service; and Isabella Hunsicker is studying psychology. These narratives, while compelling, mask the broader systemic risks associated with enrolling in high-cost for-profit programs that may saddle veterans with unmanageable debt.

For an organization that claims to represent the interests of enlisted service members, EANGUS’s alignment with a for-profit education juggernaut raises ethical concerns. Military families seeking higher education deserve advocacy that prioritizes transparency, quality, and long-term outcomes—not promotion of institutions with a documented history of exploiting the very population they claim to serve.

As for-profit colleges continue to target veterans and military families, it is incumbent on military associations, watchdogs, and policymakers to scrutinize partnerships that appear charitable on the surface but may perpetuate financial harm behind the scenes. EANGUS’s ongoing collaboration with University of Phoenix is a stark reminder that even well-intentioned organizations can become complicit in corporate profiteering when oversight and accountability are lacking.

Sources:

• University of Phoenix Press Release, August 13, 2025

• EANGUS Official Website

• Apollo Global Management, University of Phoenix corporate information

• Government Accountability Office and Department of Education reports on for-profit colleges

The Serenity Prayer, Climate Collapse, and Genocide: A Deal with the Devil

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."

The Serenity Prayer has comforted millions. In times of personal struggle, it can be a powerful call to surrender what lies beyond one’s control. But in moments of global crisis, when powerful institutions profit from destruction, the prayer can function less as a path to peace and more as a pact of passivity—a deal with the devil.

This danger becomes stark in the face of two intertwined realities: planetary climate collapse and the mass suffering of human populations through war and genocide. While glaciers melt and firestorms raze entire regions, and while families in Gaza are buried beneath rubble from precision airstrikes, too many well-meaning individuals offer only whispered prayers for acceptance. The language of “serenity” has become a spiritual sedative, numbing people to action in the face of unprecedented violence.

The horror in Gaza is not isolated. It is the latest chapter in a long history of calculated brutality. For more than nine months, Israeli forces have carried out one of the most intensive bombing campaigns of the century, reducing schools, hospitals, and apartment blocks to ash. Palestinians—already confined, stateless, and starving—are told to disappear quietly. And in the United States, many of the most powerful evangelical Christian institutions offer not protest, but prayer. They do not condemn the bombs. They bless them.

This theology of inaction extends to the climate crisis as well. Fires in Canada have darkened skies from New York to Kentucky. Rising seas threaten to erase Pacific island nations and entire Gulf communities. Extreme heat has shattered records from Delhi to Phoenix. The science is clear, and has been for decades. The cause is clear: the burning of fossil fuels for profit. And yet, rather than confront the systems responsible, many Americans—especially in religious communities—retreat into familiar verses, trusting in divine will while oil executives thank them for their silence.

This pattern is old. During the genocide of Native Americans, Christian settlers invoked scripture to justify massacres. Indigenous nations were labeled “heathens” standing in the way of Manifest Destiny. Boarding schools were built to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Entire civilizations were wiped out in the name of order, law, and even God. Churches, rather than stand with the oppressed, often operated hand-in-hand with empire. They prayed not for justice, but for tranquility—after the land had been stolen and the people erased.

In the twentieth century, many Christian leaders remained silent during the Holocaust. In the Rwandan genocide, clergy sometimes aided the killers. Again and again, the lesson is clear: serenity without resistance is complicity.

And today, we see this same quiet complicity in American Christian higher education. At Liberty University—a billion-dollar religious empire—the Serenity Prayer might just as well hang above the boardroom. The institution thrives on a mixture of fundamentalist certainty, political power, and economic ambition. Its law school has become a breeding ground for conservative legal warriors who reinterpret justice through dominionist theology. Its Jesse Helms School of Government honors a segregationist legacy while preparing students for ideological battle. Climate science is downplayed. Militarism is sanctified. And genocide—whether in the name of security or salvation—is never named.

In such an environment, prayer becomes performance. It soothes the conscience while injustice metastasizes. It gives believers a moral loophole: if change is deemed impossible, no action is required. But change is not impossible. Resistance is not futile. And silence is not neutral.

We must reclaim the Serenity Prayer from the institutions that have weaponized it. Serenity cannot be the first response to atrocity. Courage must lead, especially when the victims are silenced. Wisdom must include historical memory—of the land theft that built America, of the smoke rising from Gaza, of the forests burning in Siberia and the Sahel. And acceptance must come only after struggle, not before it.

The future will not judge us for how often we prayed, but for what we did while praying. In an age of climate catastrophe and global injustice, serenity without struggle is not peace—it is surrender.

Sources:
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Serenity Prayer and its Contexts, Library of Congress
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “Gaza Emergency Reports” (2023–2025)
UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment Report (2023)
Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Apparent War Crimes in Gaza” (2024)
Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything
Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt
Democracy Now!, “Witnessing the Gaza Bombardment”
Center for Environmental Justice, “Climate Apartheid” Report
Higher Education Inquirer, “Liberty University: A Billion-Dollar Edu-Religious Powerhouse Under the Lens” (2025)

"Crooks, Pigs, and Cockroaches": A Raw Exchange on the Resurgence of the For-Profit Grift

It started with a grim but familiar warning from a longtime borrower—someone who’s watched the student loan system implode in slow motion and seen the worst actors escape accountability:

“Well this isn't good.
New accrediting agency for colleges run and operated by for-profit college goons....
I’m sure we will see scammy colleges take off again!”

The warning was in response to recent developments in higher ed accreditation: the rise of a new accreditor with leadership tied to the same for-profit institutions that helped build a trillion-dollar debt crisis. The borrower’s tone was weary, but not surprised.

I responded, because this wasn’t news to me either:

“Thanks. That’s how neoliberalism works. It never ends. So we have to continue fighting until we can’t fight anymore.”

But I didn’t stop there. I wrote what I’ve long felt—what I’ve heard from whistleblowers, from insiders, and from people still bound by NDAs that keep the truth buried:

“Yes, crooks and pigs and cockroaches have been around forever, and they all smell money.
Even people who claim to be on our side are not really on our side. That’s why so little good happens.
I have an NDA so I can't tell you everything.

Like so many others who’ve tried to expose the rot, I’ve spoken with whistleblowers across multiple campuses. I’ve seen clear cases of fraud swept under the rug.

“Should have buried the University of Phoenix with this one,” I wrote, referencing an investigation into schools using fake enrollment paperwork to defraud taxpayers.
“And someone should have taken this story,” I added, pointing to our own work at The Higher Education Inquirer:
What the Pentagon Doesn’t Want You to See: For-Profit Colleges in the Military-Industrial-Education Complex.
“More than 30 years of grift and eight years of coverups.”

That article, like so many others exposing corruption in higher ed, was met mostly with silence. Whistleblowers risk everything, and still the stories too often disappear into the noise.

I used to have a trusted contact inside the U.S. Department of Education. But that channel dried up when the Trump administration came in and the revolving door between industry and government started spinning even faster.

So where does that leave us?

“What I’d like to see,” I wrote, “is for us to send a mole to work at AidVantage or one of the other student loan servicers.”

It’s not fantasy—it’s necessity. When the system protects grifters, when accreditors are captured, and when servicers lose records, miscalculate forgiveness, and dodge accountability, we need more than hope. We need infiltration. We need whistleblowers. We need truth.

The scam isn’t over. It’s reloading.

And we at The Higher Education Inquirer will keep exposing the crooks, pigs, and cockroaches—until we can’t fight anymore.

Sources:

• The Daily Caller: “Massive College Scams Taxpayers Out Of Student Loans With Fake Enrollment Paperwork, Whistleblowers Say”

• The Higher Education Inquirer: “What the Pentagon Doesn’t Want You to See: For-Profit Colleges in the Military-Industrial-Education Complex”

• Private correspondence with a longtime borrower, July 2025

Time to Shut Off the Tap: The Case for Ending DoD Tuition Assistance to Predatory Colleges

On July 3, 2025, the Higher Education Inquirer received the latest response from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) regarding FOIA request 22-F-1203—our most recent effort in a nearly eight-year campaign to uncover how subprime and for-profit colleges have preyed on military servicemembers, veterans, and their families.

The response included confirmation that 1,420 pages of documents were located. But of those, 306 pages were withheld in full, and 1,114 were released only with heavy redactions. A few for-profit colleges—Trident University International, Grand Canyon University, DeVry University, and American Public University System (which includes American Military University and American Public University)—were specifically mentioned in the partially visible content.

And yet the larger truth remains hidden. The names of other institutions known to have exploited military-connected students—University of Phoenix, Colorado Technical University, American InterContinental University, Purdue University Global, and Liberty University Online, among others—were nowhere to be found in the documents we received. Their absence is conspicuous.

We have been pursuing the truth since December 2017, demanding records that would reveal how the DoD enabled these schools to thrive. We sought the list of the 50 worst-performing colleges receiving Tuition Assistance (TA) funds, based on data compiled under Executive Order 13607 during the Obama Administration. That list was never released. When the Trump Administration took power in 2017, they quietly abandoned the protective measures meant to hold these colleges accountable. Our FOIA request DOD OIG-2019-000702 was denied, with the Pentagon claiming that no such list existed. A second request in 2021 (21-F-0411) was also rejected. And now, more than three years after we filed our 2022 request, the DoD continues to deny the public full access to the truth.

The records we did receive are riddled with legal exemptions: internal deliberations, privacy claims, and most notably, references to 10 U.S.C. § 4021, a law that allows the DoD to withhold details of research transactions outside of traditional grants and contracts. In other words, the Pentagon has built legal firewalls around its relationships with for-profit education providers—and continues to shield bad actors from scrutiny.

But the complicity doesn’t end there. It extends deep into the institutional fabric of how the military interfaces with higher education.

Decades of Systemic Corruption

Since the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Defense has worked hand-in-glove with for-profit colleges through a nonprofit called the Council of College and Military Educators (CCME). What began in the 1970s as a noble initiative to expand access to education for military personnel was hijacked by predatory colleges—including the University of Phoenix—that used the organization as a lobbying front.

These schools infiltrated CCME events, using them to curry favor with military officials, often by hiring veterans as on-base sales agents and even providing alcohol to loosen up potential gatekeepers. While CCME publicly maintained the appearance of academic integrity and service, behind the scenes it served as a conduit for lobbying, influence, and enrollment schemes. Military education officers were schmoozed, manipulated, and in some cases, quietly co-opted. This is something you won’t find in CCME’s official history.

We have been told by multiple insiders that the partnership between DoD and these schools was not just tolerated but actively nurtured. Attempts at reform came and went. Investigations were buried. Promises to "do better" evaporated. No one was held accountable. No one went to jail. But the damage has been lasting—measured in ruined credit, wasted benefits, and lives derailed by fraudulent degrees and broken promises.

The Trump-Hegseth Department of Defense

And still, new scandals—except those uncovered by us—go largely unreported. The media has moved on. Congressional attention has shifted. And the same schools, or their rebranded successors, continue to operate freely, often under the protective shadow of military partnerships.

Today, the DoD continues to deny that the DODOIG-2019-000702 list of the 50 worst schools even exists. But we know otherwise. Based on VA data, whistleblower accounts, and independent reporting, we are confident that this list was compiled—and buried. The question is why. And the answer may very well lie in the unredacted names of institutions too politically connected or too legally protected to be exposed.

The Evidence Is Overwhelming

The most damning proof of institutional complicity remains publicly available. In GAO Report GAO-14-855, published in 2014, the Government Accountability Office detailed the deep flaws in DoD’s oversight of its Tuition Assistance program. The report highlighted inconsistent evaluations, unqualified contractor reviewers, vague standards, and incomplete data collection. The DoD had spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on schools without ensuring quality or protecting students. In response, DoD temporarily halted its school evaluations—then quietly resumed business as usual.

PwC audits from 2015 and 2018 confirmed widespread noncompliance with DoD’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Schools violated marketing guidelines, offered misleading transfer information, and failed to provide basic academic counseling. Few were sanctioned, and even fewer were removed from eligibility lists.

Gatehouse Strategies, in its 2022 report, reinforced these conclusions. It warned of “a lack of consistent enforcement mechanisms,” and found that even institutions under investigation continued to receive DoD TA funding. The system appeared designed not to punish misconduct, but to tolerate and obscure it.

The Cost of Inaction

Meanwhile, service members seeking education are left exposed. Many receive low-value credentials, accumulate debt, and waste their limited benefits at schools that offer little academic rigor and even less career mobility. When those credits don’t transfer—or worse, when degrees are rejected by employers—the burden falls squarely on the individual.

Institutions like American Public University System, University of Phoenix, Colorado Technical University, DeVry, and Purdue Global have collected tens of millions in DoD TA funding. Some are under state or federal investigation. Others have quietly changed ownership or rebranded. But the underlying model—targeting military students with high-volume, low-quality online programs—remains largely intact.

We Don’t Need Another Report

The time for reflection is over. The data from GAO, PwC, Gatehouse, and from our own FOIA investigations are clear. What remains is the political will to act.

The Department of Defense should immediately:

– Revoke TA eligibility for schools with documented abuse, federal scrutiny, or repeat MOU violations.
– Release the suppressed list of the worst-performing colleges, as identified under Executive Order 13607.
– Mandate transparent outcome reporting—including transferability, job placement, and default rates—for every school in the TA program.
– Sever ties with lobbyist conduits like CCME that have enabled predatory behavior for decades.

This is not just a matter of bureaucratic reform—it is about justice. For the servicemembers who were deceived. For the families who sacrificed. For the taxpayers who unknowingly foot the bill for failure.

The Higher Education Inquirer will not stop pushing for those names, those documents, and that accountability. Behind every redaction is a veteran who trusted the system—and got scammed. Behind every delay is another student targeted by the same exploitative machinery. Behind every refusal to act is a government more loyal to profit than to people.

Related Reading
GAO-14-855: DoD Education Benefits Oversight Lacking
Military Times (2018): DoD review finds 0% of schools following TA rules
Military Times (2019): Schools are struggling to meet TA rules, but DoD isn’t punishing them. Here’s why.

HEI and the Backstage of Higher Education

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) exists not to flatter the ivory tower, but to peer behind its stage curtains—into the backstage of higher education, where the hidden scripts are written and the illusions maintained.

For decades, mainstream media and college marketing machines have focused their attention on the front stage of higher education: gleaming campuses, smiling students, glowing success stories, and elite rankings. This curated image serves the interests of university administrators, politicians, media conglomerates, and Wall Street investors. But what lies behind the scenes is far more complex—and far more consequential for working families, indebted students, adjunct instructors, and the public at large.

Pulling Back the Curtain

HEI’s mission is to expose what Erving Goffman might call the “backstage” of academia: the place where the elite performance of higher education is rehearsed and maintained through opaque deals, digital enclosures, and predatory practices. It’s where the real business of higher education unfolds—often at odds with the public good.

We investigate the corporatization of the university, the abuse of contingent labor, the unpayable debts foisted on students, and the machinations of political operatives and private equity barons who have colonized education as a commodity. We speak with whistleblowers, student debtors, low-wage academic workers, and those abandoned by a system that promises mobility but too often delivers exploitation.

The Business of the Dream

In the backstage world of higher education, dreams are monetized. Institutions like the University of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University, and even respected nonprofits have built empires on financial aid schemes and manipulated metrics. Behind them are financiers, hedge funds, and lobbying firms whose interests are rarely aligned with students or educators.

The same institutions that publicly tout diversity and access often quietly outsource instruction to underpaid adjuncts, collaborate with surveillance edtech companies, and silence internal dissent. Meanwhile, media organizations that once held universities accountable have cut education reporters or become entangled with the very institutions they should be questioning.

The Hidden Curriculum

The Higher Education Inquirer operates as a counterforce to this manufactured consensus. We are not neutral. We are critical, investigative, and guided by a commitment to social justice, transparency, and truth-telling. We report not only what universities and policymakers say, but what they do—and whom their decisions harm.

Our coverage includes:

• Student debt and loan forgiveness, including the struggles of Corinthian Colleges alumni and the unfinished business of accountability.

• Adjunct labor and the two-tier academic caste system.

• Edtech’s empty promises, from learning analytics to AI hype.

• The political economy of elite universities, including their ties to hedge funds, Silicon Valley, and state power.

• Federal regulatory theater, where revolving doors between government and for-profit colleges remain a threat to the public interest.

From the Margins to the Archive

HEI serves a different audience—those who have been ignored or exploited by higher education's front-facing PR. We amplify stories from below and archive the struggles that mainstream outlets won’t touch.

We also aim to document history as it happens—before it’s rewritten by university presidents or erased by marketing teams. We provide a long memory in a system increasingly shaped by ahistorical metrics and technocratic solutions.

A Public Good Reclaimed

We don’t pretend to be objective bystanders. Our journalism is part of a larger struggle to reclaim education as a public good, not a private privilege. We call for solidarity with students, educators, and workers. We demand that institutions serve the people who make them run, not just the ones who profit from their prestige.

The backstage of higher education is messy, fraught, and at times devastating. But by pulling back the curtain, we believe there’s still a possibility of building something better.

Sources

• The Higher Education Inquirer archives

• Whistleblower accounts

• U.S. Department of Education public data and FOIA requests

• Interviews with contingent faculty and student debtors

• Academic research on neoliberalism, debt peonage, and credential capitalism

Higher Learning Commission Passes the Buck on Ambow-CSU Deal

The Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the regional accreditor for Colorado State University (CSU), has refused to comment on whether it is investigating or overseeing any partnership between CSU and Ambow Education, a Chinese-American education technology company with a record of volatility, opacity, and questionable business practices.

In an email to the Higher Education Inquirer on July 28, HLC Public Information Officer Laura Janota wrote, “You would need to check with the institution regarding any specifics about its agreement with Ambow Education.” While acknowledging that HLC evaluates an institution’s offerings and operations as part of its ongoing accreditation relationship, Janota pointed to generic contractual guidance on the HLC website rather than offering any assurance that the accreditor is scrutinizing a deal involving Ambow—a company that has raised alarms due to its foray into the U.S. higher ed sector via its HybriU platform.

This type of response is not unusual for HLC, which has come under criticism for its lack of accountability and its longstanding pattern of accrediting both elite universities and subprime colleges.

As previously reported by the Higher Education Inquirer:

"Institutional accreditation is no sign of quality. Worse yet, accreditation by organizations such as the Middle States Association, Western Association of Schools and Colleges, and the Higher Learning Commission is used by subprime colleges to lend legitimacy to their predatory, low-standard operations."

According to the U.S. Department of Education, HLC currently accredits 946 Title IV-eligible institutions, opening the doors for them to collectively receive nearly $40 billion in federal student aid annually—along with billions more from the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs.

HLC accredits prestigious institutions such as the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, and Notre Dame. But it also accredits notorious subprime schools including Colorado Technical University, DeVry University, University of Phoenix, Walden University, National American University, and Purdue University Global. On the three pillars of regional accreditation—compliance, quality assurance, and quality improvement—HLC has consistently failed when it comes to oversight of predatory institutions.

Even as far back as 2000, critics within academia called out the ethical rot. The American Association of University Professors protested HLC’s support of for-profit schools. That same year, then-AAUP General Secretary Mary A. Burgan remarked:

"I really worry about the intrusion of the profit motive in the accreditation system. Some of them, as I have said, will accredit a ham sandwich."

HLC’s financial structure reinforces this compromised position: it is funded by the institutions it accredits. Over the last 30 years, HLC has collected millions of dollars in dues from some of the nation’s most predatory schools. This funding model mirrors the conflicts of interest that plagued credit rating agencies during the 2008 financial crisis—a comparison made explicitly by economists David Deming and David Figlio in a 2016 report:

“Accreditors—who are paid by the institutions themselves—appear to be ineffectual at best, much like the role of credit rating agencies during the recent financial crisis.”

Despite public attention, federal oversight of accreditors remains weak. Under the Trump-DeVos administration, regulatory protections were rolled back significantly. A 2023 internal investigation revealed that the U.S. Department of Education was not adequately monitoring accreditors, confirming what many higher education watchdogs already knew: that no one is truly watching the accreditors.

The Ambow-CSU situation underscores this systemic failure. Rather than acting as an independent reviewer, HLC has chosen to defer responsibility to the very institution it is tasked with overseeing. This is not just a case of passing the buck; it's another example of accreditors shielding themselves from accountability while public institutions are left to make private deals with for-profit entities—unchecked, unregulated, and largely unreported.

Sources:

• Email correspondence from Laura Janota, Higher Learning Commission, July 28, 2025

• https://www.hlcommission.org/institution/1046/

• Higher Education Inquirer, September 24, 2018: Higher Learning Commission: Accreditation Is No Sign of Quality

• David Deming and David Figlio, Accountability in US Education: Applying Lessons from K–12 Experience to Higher Education (2016)

• U.S. Department of Education accreditation database

• Public statements from AAUP and archived remarks by Mary A. Burgan

When American Greed is the Norm

Greed is no longer a sin in America—it’s a system. It’s a curriculum. It’s a badge of success. In the American higher education marketplace, greed is not the exception. It’s the norm.

We see it in the bloated salaries of university presidents who deliver austerity to everyone but themselves. We see it in billion-dollar endowments hoarded like dragon’s gold while students drown in debt. We see it in the metastasizing ranks of middlemen—consultants, online program managers, enrollment optimization firms—who profit off the dreams and desperation of working-class families.

But greed in American higher education is more than a few bad actors or golden parachutes. It is institutionalized, normalized, and weaponized.

The Student as Customer, the Campus as Marketplace

It began with the rebranding of education as a “return on investment,” a transaction rather than a transformation. The purpose of college was no longer to liberate the mind but to monetize the degree.

By the 1990s, under bipartisan neoliberal consensus, public colleges were defunded and forced to adopt the private sector’s logic: cut costs, raise prices, sell more. Tuition rose. Debt exploded. The ranks of administrators swelled while faculty were downsized and adjunctified. The market had spoken.

But even that wasn’t enough. A generation of edu-preneurs emerged—Silicon Valley-funded disruptors, for-profit college chains, and online program managers—who turned learning into a scalable commodity. Robocolleges like Southern New Hampshire University, Purdue Global, and the University of Phoenix began operating more like tech platforms than institutions of thought.

The result? Diploma mills at the front end and collection agencies at the back.

Greed in the Name of God and Country

Greed doesn’t always look like Wall Street. Sometimes it wears the face of morality. Religious colleges, some of them under the protection of nonprofit status, have become breeding grounds for political operatives and ideological grooming—while raking in millions through taxpayer-funded financial aid.

Liberty University, Grand Canyon University, and a host of lesser-known Bible colleges operate under a warped theology of prosperity, turning salvation into a subscription plan. Meanwhile, they push anti-democratic ideologies and funnel money toward political causes far removed from the mission of education.

Accreditation as a Shell Game

The accreditors—the supposed watchdogs of educational quality—have been largely asleep at the wheel or complicit. When greed is the norm, accountability is an inconvenience. For-profit schools regularly reinvent themselves as nonprofits. Online program managers operate in regulatory gray zones. Mergers and acquisitions disguise collapse as growth.

Accreditation agencies rubber-stamp it all, as long as the paperwork is tidy and the lobbyists are well-compensated.

Debt as Discipline

More than 43 million Americans carry federal student loan debt. Many will never escape it. This debt is not just financial—it’s ideological. It keeps the workforce compliant. It disciplines dissent. It renders critical thought a luxury.

And those who push for debt relief? They are met with moral lectures about personal responsibility—from the same lawmakers who handed trillions to banks, defense contractors, and fossil fuel companies.

Silicon Valley's Hungry Mouth

The new frontier of greed is AI. Tech giants like Google, Amazon Web Services, and Meta are embedding themselves deeper into education—not to empower learning, but to extract data, monetize behavior, and deepen surveillance. Every click, every quiz, every attendance record is a monetizable moment.

Universities, starved for funding and afraid of obsolescence, are selling access to students in exchange for access to cloud infrastructure and algorithmic tools they barely understand.

Greed Isn’t Broken—It’s Working as Designed

In this system, who wins? Not students. Not faculty. Not society.

The winners are those who turn knowledge into a commodity, compliance into virtue, and inequality into inevitability. Those who build castles from the bones of public education, then retreat behind walls of donor-backed endowments and think tanks. The winners are few. But they write the rules.

A Different Future Is Possible

If American greed is the norm, then what remains of education’s soul must be found in the margins—in the community college professor working three jobs. In the librarian defending open access. In the adjunct organizing a union. In the students refusing to be pawns in someone else’s game.

The antidote to greed is not charity—it’s solidarity.

Until justice is funded as well as football. Until learning is valued more than branding. Until access is more than a talking point on a donor brochure—then greed will remain not just a sin, but a system.

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Sources

• U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics

• The Century Foundation, “The OPM Industry: Profits Over Students” (2023)

• Chronicle of Higher Education, “Administrative Bloat and the Adjunct Crisis”

• IRS Nonprofit Filings, Liberty University and Grand Canyon University

• Debt Collective, “The State of Student Debt” (2025)

• Public records and audits of Title IV institutions, 2022–2024

• Higher Education Inquirer archives

The Pritzker Family Paradox: Elite Power, Higher Education, and Political Ambition

          [JB and Penny Pritzker] 

The Pritzker family stands as a symbol of wealth, influence, and access in American public life. From the luxury of Hyatt Hotels to the boardrooms of private equity and the highest ranks of government, their reach extends across economic sectors and institutional spheres. But beneath the carefully managed public image lies a troubling contradiction—one that implicates higher education, for-profit exploitation, and national politics.

Penny Pritzger

Penny Pritzker, a former U.S. Secretary of Commerce and current trustee of Harvard University, has been a key figure in shaping education policy from elite perches. She also had a working relationship with Vistria Group, a private equity firm that now owns the University of Phoenix and Risepoint. These two entities have been central to the subprime college industry—profiting from the hopes of working-class students while delivering poor outcomes and burdensome debt.

Pritzker’s relationship with Vistria runs deeper than simple association. In the late 1990s, she partnered with Vistria co-founder Marty Nesbitt to launch The Parking Spot, a national airport parking venture that brought them both business success and public recognition. When Nesbitt founded Vistria in 2013, he brought with him the experience and elite networks formed during that earlier partnership. Penny Pritzker’s family foundation—Pritzker Traubert—was among the early funders of Vistria, helping to establish its brand as a more “socially conscious” private equity firm. Although she stepped away from any formal role when she joined the Obama administration, her involvement in Vistria’s formation and funding set the stage for the firm’s expansion into sectors like for-profit education and healthcare.

Vistria’s acquisition of the University of Phoenix, and later Risepoint, positioned it as a major player in the privatization of American higher education. The firm continues to profit from schools that promise economic mobility but often deliver student debt and limited job prospects. This is not just a critique of business practices, but a systemic indictment of how elite networks shape education policy, finance, and outcomes.

Penny’s role as a trustee on the Harvard Corporation only sharpens this contradiction. Harvard, a university that markets itself as a global champion of meritocracy and inclusion, remains silent about one of its trustees helping to finance and support a firm that monetizes educational inequality. The governing body has not publicly addressed any potential conflict of interest between her Harvard role and her involvement with Vistria.

JB Pritzger

These contradictions are not limited to Penny. Her brother, J.B. Pritzker, is currently the governor of Illinois and one of the wealthiest elected officials in the country. Though he has no documented personal financial stake in Vistria, his administration has significant ties to the firm. Jesse Ruiz, J.B. Pritzker’s Deputy Governor for Education during his first term, left state government in 2022 to take a top leadership position at Vistria as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer.

This revolving-door dynamic—where a senior education policymaker transitions directly from a progressive administration to a private equity firm profiting from for-profit colleges—underscores the ideological alignment and operational synergy between the Pritzker political machine and firms like Vistria. While the governor publicly champions equity and expanded public education access, his administration’s former top education official is now helping manage legal and compliance operations for a firm that extracts value from struggling students and public loan programs.

J.B. Pritzker has announced plans to run for a third term as governor in 2026, but many observers believe he is positioning himself for a 2028 presidential campaign. His high-profile public appearances, pointed critiques of Donald Trump, and increased visibility in early primary states all suggest a national campaign is being tested. With his vast personal wealth, Pritzker could self-fund a serious run while drawing on elite networks built over decades—networks that include both his sister’s role at Harvard and their shared business and political allies.

Elites in US Higher Education, A Familiar Theme 

What emerges is a deeply American story—one in which the same elite networks shape both the problems and the proposed solutions. The Pritzkers are not alone in this dynamic, but their dual influence in higher education and politics makes them a case study in elite capture. They are architects and beneficiaries of a system in which public office, private equity, and nonprofit institutions converge to consolidate power.

The for-profit education sector continues to exploit regulatory gaps, marketing expensive credentials to desperate individuals while avoiding the scrutiny that traditional nonprofit colleges face. When private equity firms like Vistria acquire troubled institutions, they repackage them, restructure their branding, and keep extracting value from public loan dollars. The government lends, students borrow, and investors profit. The people left behind are those without political clout—low-income students, veterans, working parents—who believed the marketing and now face debt with little return.

Harvard’s silence, University of Phoenix’s reinvention, the rebranding of Academic Partnerships/Risepoint, and J.B. Pritzker’s ambitions all signal a troubling direction for American democracy. As more billionaires enter politics and public institutions become more dependent on private capital, the line between public service and private gain continues to erode.

The Higher Education Inquirer believes this moment demands not only scrutiny, but structural change. Until elite universities hold their trustees accountable, until political candidates reject the influence of exploitative industries, and until the public reclaims its voice in higher education policy, the Pritzker paradox will continue to define the American experience—where access to opportunity is sold to the highest bidder, and democracy is reshaped by those who can afford to buy it.

Sources
– U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard
– University of Phoenix outcome data (IPEDS, 2024)
– Harvard University governance and trustee records
– Vistria Group investor reports and public filings
– Wall Street Journal, “America’s Second-Richest Elected Official Is Acting Like He Wants to Be President” (2025)
– Associated Press, “Governor J.B. Pritzker positions himself as national Democratic leader” (2025)
– Vistria.com, “Marty Nesbitt on his friendship with Obama and what he learned from the Pritzkers”
– Politico, “Former Obama Insiders Seek Administration’s Blessing of For-Profit College Takeover” (2016)
– Vistria Group announcement, “Jesse Ruiz Joins Vistria as General Counsel and CCO” (2022)

The Digital Dark Ages of Higher Education: Greed, Myth, and the Ghosts of Lost Knowledge

In a time of unprecedented data collection, artificial intelligence, and networked access to information, it seems unthinkable that we could be slipping into a new Dark Age. But that is precisely what is unfolding in American higher education—a Digital Dark Age marked not just by the disappearance of records, but by the disappearance of truth.

This is not a passive erosion of information. It is a systemic, coordinated effort to conceal institutional failure, to commodify public knowledge, and to weaponize mythology. It is a collapse not of technology, but of ethics and memory.

A Dark Age in Plain Sight

Digital decay is usually associated with vanishing files and outdated formats. In higher education, it takes the more sinister form of intentional erasure. Data that once offered accountability—graduation rates, job placement figures, loan default data, even course materials—have become reputational liabilities. When inconvenient, they vanish.

Gainful Employment data disappeared from federal websites under the Trump administration. Student outcomes from for-profit conversions are obscured through accounting tricks. Internal audits and consultant reports sit behind NDAs and paywalls. And when institutions close or rebrand, their failures are scrubbed from the record like Soviet photographs.

This is a higher education system consumed by image management, where inconvenient truths are buried under branded mythologies.

The Robocolleges and the Rise of the Algorithm

No phenomenon illustrates this transformation more starkly than the rise of robocolleges—fully online institutions like Southern New Hampshire University, University of Phoenix, and Liberty University Online. These institutions, driven more by enrollment growth than educational mission, are built to scale, surveil, and extract.

Their architecture is not intellectual but algorithmic: automated learning systems, outsourced instructors, and AI-driven behavioral analytics replace human-centered pedagogy. Data replaces dialogue. And all of it happens behind proprietary systems controlled by Online Program Managers (OPMs)—for-profit companies like 2U, Academic Partnerships, and Wiley that handle recruitment, curriculum design, and marketing for universities, often taking a majority cut of tuition revenue.

These robocolleges aren’t built to educate; they’re built to profit. They are credential vending machines with advertising budgets, protected by political lobbying and obscured by branding.

And they are perfectly suited to a Digital Dark Age, where metrics are manipulated, failures are hidden, and education is indistinguishable from a subscription service.

Myth #1: The College Degree as Guaranteed Mobility

The dominant myth still peddled by these institutions—and many traditional ones—is that a college degree is a golden ticket to upward mobility. But in an economy of stagnant wages, rising tuition, and unpayable debt, this narrative is a weapon.

Robocolleges and their OPM partners sell dreams on Instagram and YouTube—“Success stories,” “first-gen pride,” and inflated salary stats—while ignoring the mountains of debt, dropout rates, and lifelong economic precarity their students face. And when those stories come to light? They disappear behind legal threats, settlements, and strategic rebranding.

The dream has become a trap, and the myth has become a means of extraction.

Myth #2: Innovation Through EdTech

“Tech will save us” is the second great myth. EdTech companies promise to revolutionize learning through adaptive platforms, AI tutors, and automated assessments. But what they really offer is surveillance, cost-cutting, and outsourcing.

Institutions are increasingly beholden to opaque algorithms and third-party platforms that strip faculty of agency and students of privacy. Assessment becomes analytics. Learning becomes labor. And the metrics these systems produce—completion rates, engagement data—are as easily manipulated as they are misunderstood.

Far from democratizing education, EdTech has helped turn it into a digital panopticon, where every click is monetized, and every action is tracked.

Myth #3: The Digital Campus as a Public Good

Universities love to claim that their digital campuses are open and inclusive. But in truth, access is restricted, commercialized, and disappearing.

Libraries are gutted. Archives are defunded. Publicly funded research is locked behind publisher paywalls. Historical documents, administrative records, even syllabi are now ephemeral—stored on private platforms, subject to deletion at will. The digital campus is a gated community, and the public is locked out.

Third-party vendors now control what students read, how they’re taught, and who can access the past. Memory is no longer a public good—it is a leased service.

Greed, Cheating, and Digital Amnesia

This is not simply a story about decay—it is a story about cheating. Not just by students, but by institutions themselves.

Colleges cheat by manipulating data to mislead accreditors and prospective students. OPMs cheat by obscuring their contracts and revenue-sharing models. Robocolleges cheat by prioritizing growth over learning. And all of them cheat when they hide the truth, delete the data, or suppress the whistleblowers.

Faculty are silenced through non-disclosure agreements. Archivists are laid off. Historians and librarians are told to “streamline” and “rebrand” rather than preserve and inform. The keepers of memory are being dismissed, just when we need them most.

Myth as Memory Hole

The Digital Dark Ages are not merely a result of failing tech—they are the logical outcome of a system that values profit over truth, optics over integrity, and compliance over inquiry.

Greed isn’t incidental. It’s the design. And the myths propagated by robocolleges, OPMs, and traditional universities alike are the cover stories that keep the public sedated and the money flowing.

American higher education once aspired to be a sanctuary of memory, a force for social mobility, and a guardian of public knowledge. But it is now drifting toward becoming a black box—a mythologized, monetized shadow of its former self, accessible only through marketing and controlled by vendors.

Without intervention—legal, financial, and intellectual—we risk becoming a society where education is an illusion, memory is curated, and truth is whatever survives the deletion script.

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Sources and References:

• Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol

• Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed

• Christopher Newfield, The Great Mistake

• Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains

• U.S. Department of Education archives (missing Gainful Employment data)

• “Paywall: The Business of Scholarship” (2018)

• SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

• Internet Archive reports on digital preservation

• ProPublica and The Century Foundation on OPMs and robocolleges

• Faculty union reports on librarian and archivist layoffs

• Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education coverage of data manipulation, robocolleges, and institutional opacity