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Tuesday, January 6, 2026

End of an Era


We extend our deepest gratitude to the many courageous voices who have contributed to the Higher Education Inquirer over the years. Through research, reporting, whistleblowing, analysis, and public service, you have exposed inequities, challenged powerful interests, and helped the public understand the realities of higher education.

Special thanks to:
Bryan Alexander (Future Trends Forum), Lisa Bannon (Wall Street Journal), Joe Berry (Higher Education Labor United), Stephen Burd (New America), Ann Bowers (Debt Collective), James Michael Brodie (Black and Gold Project Foundation), Patrick Campbell (Vets Ed Brief), Richard Cannon (activist), Kirk Carapezza (WGBH), Kevin L. Clay (Rutgers), Randall Collins (UPenn), Cory Doctorow, William Domhoff (UC Santa Cruz), Ruxandra Dumitriu, Keil Dumsch, Garrett Fitzgerald (College Recon), Glen Ford (with the ancestors), Richard Fossey (Condemned to Debt), Erica Gallagher (2U Whistleblower), Cliff Gibson III (Gibson & Keith), Henry Giroux (McMaster University), Terri Givens (University of British Columbia), Luke Goldstein (The Lever),  Nathan Grawe (Carleton College), Michael Green (UNLV), Michael Hainline (Restore the GI Bill for Veterans), Debra Hale Shelton (Arkansas Times), Stephanie M. Hall (education writer),  David Halperin (Republic Report), Bill Harrington (Croatan Institute), Phil Hill (On EdTech), Robert Jensen (UT Austin), Seth Kahn (WCUP), Hank Kalet (Rutgers), Ben Kaufman (Protect Borrowers), Robert Kelchen (University of Tennessee), Karen Kelsky (The Professor Is In), Neil Kraus (UWRF), LACCD Whistleblower, Michelle Lee (whistleblower), Wendy Lynne Lee (Bloomsburg University of PA), Emmanuel Legeard (whistleblower), Adam Looney (University of Utah), Alec MacGillis (ProPublica), Jon Marcus (Hechinger Report), Steven Mintz (University of Texas), John D. Murphy (Mission Forsaken), Annelise Orleck (Dartmouth), Margaret Kimberly (Black Agenda Report), Austin Longhorn (UT student loan debt whistleblower), Richard Pollock (journalist), Debbi Potts (whistleblower), Jack Metzger (Roosevelt University), Derek Newton (The Cheat Sheet), Jeff Pooley (Annenberg Center), Chris Quintana (USA Today), Jennifer Reed (University of Akron), Kevin Richert (Idaho Education News), Gary Roth (Rutgers-Newark), Mark Salisbury (TuitionFit), Stephanie Saul (NY Times), Christopher Serbagi (Serbagi Law), Alex Shebanow  (Fail State), Bob Shireman (TCF), Bill Skimmyhorn (William & Mary), Peter Simi (Chapman University), Gary Stocker (College Viability), Strelnikov, Taylor Swaak (Chronicle of Higher Education), Theresa Sweet (Sweet v Cardona), Harry Targ (Purdue University), Moe Tkacik (American Prospect),  Kim Tran (activist), Mark Twain Jr. (business insider), Michael Vasquez (The Tributary), Marina Vujnovic (Monmouth), Richard Wolff (Economic Update), Helena Worthen (Higher Ed Labor United), DW (South American Correspondent), Heidi Weber (Whistleblower Revolution), government officials who have supported transparency and accountability, and the countless other educators, researchers, whistleblowers, advocates, and public servants whose work strengthens our understanding of higher education.

Together, you form a resilient network of knowledge, courage, and public service, showing that collective insight can illuminate even the most entrenched systems. Your dedication has been, and continues to be, invaluable.

Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee

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Sunday, January 4, 2026

$8 Billion in Liberty University Debt: Engaging a Faith-Driven Constituency

More than 290,000 Liberty University borrowers owe over $8 billion in federal student loans, yet most remain politically disengaged. Many are veterans or enrolled in accelerated master’s programs often criticized as “robocolleges.” What sets this population apart is not just the size of their debt, but their faith and social conservatism—a demographic frequently overlooked by traditional student debt advocacy.


For unions and nonprofit organizations committed to civic engagement and economic justice, this represents a unique opportunity: mobilize borrowers in ways that align with their values, rather than against them. Messaging that highlights fairness, personal responsibility, and stewardship—core Christian principles—can resonate deeply while framing student debt as a challenge to both economic and moral accountability.

These borrowers are approaching peak voting age, meaning that engagement now could influence local and national politics in the coming election cycles. Institutions like the University of Phoenix show the scale of the opportunity: over one million borrowers owe more than $21 billion nationwide, suggesting that faith-aligned organizing strategies could have broad impact.

The strategy is clear: educate borrowers about their rights, expose predatory practices, and organize them into civic action, all while respecting their values and beliefs. Done thoughtfully, this approach can build trust and spur meaningful participation in democracy, turning a population long overlooked into an informed, motivated constituency.

The coming years will test whether unions and nonprofits seize this moment. Hundreds of thousands of conservative, Christian borrowers could become a powerful force for accountability and change—but only if engagement is value-driven, strategic, and timely.

Sources:

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Higher Education Inquirer Resources, Spring 2026

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

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











Ahn, Ilsup (2023). The Ethics of Educational Healthcare: Student Debt, Neoliberalism, and Justice. Palgrave Macmillan.
Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.
Alexander, Bryan (2023). Universities on Fire. Johns Hopkins Press.
Alexander, Bryan (2026). Peak Higher Ed. Johns Hopkins Press.
Angulo, A. (2016). Diploma Mills: How For-profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Apthekar, Bettina (1966). Big Business and the American University. New Outlook Publishers.
Apthekar, Bettina (1969). Higher Education and the Student Rebellion in the United States, 1960–1969: A Bibliography.
Archibald, R. & Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America's Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.
Armstrong, E. & Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.
Arum, R. & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press.
Baldwin, Davarian (2021). In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. Bold Type Books.
Barr, Andrew & Turner, Sarah (2023). The Labor Market Returns to Higher Education. Oxford University Press.
Bennett, W. & Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It? Thomas Nelson.
Berg, I. (1970). The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs. Praeger.
Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University. Princeton University Press.
Berman, Elizabeth Popp & Stevens, Mitchell (eds.) (2019). The University Under Pressure. Emerald Publishing.
Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.
Berry, J. and Worthen, H. (2021). Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement in Higher Education. Pluto Books.
Best, J. & Best, E. (2014). The Student Loan Mess. Atkinson Family Foundation.
Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism. Norton.
Bogue, E. Grady & Aper, Jeffrey (2000). Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education.
Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace. Princeton University Press.
Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works. NYU Press.
Brennan, J. & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press.
Brint, S. & Karabel, J. (1989). The Diverted Dream. Oxford University Press.
Burawoy, Michael & Mitchell, Katharyne (eds.) (2020). The University, Neoliberalism, and the Politics of Inequality. Routledge.
Burd, Stephen (2024). Lifting the Veil on Enrollment Management: How a Powerful Industry is Limiting Social Mobility in American Higher Education. Harvard Education Press
Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus. Rutgers University Press.
Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024). Whiteness in the Ivory Tower. Teachers College Press.
Cantwell, Brendan & Robertson, Susan (eds.) (2021). Research Handbook on the Politics of Higher Education. Edward Elgar.
Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education. Princeton University Press.
Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off? Public Affairs.
Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.
Cassuto, Leonard (2015). The Graduate School Mess. Harvard University Press.
Caterine, Christopher (2020). Leaving Academia. Princeton Press.
Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass. University of Chicago Press.
Chomsky, Noam (2014). Masters of Mankind. Haymarket Books.
Choudaha, Rahul & de Wit, Hans (eds.) (2019). International Student Recruitment and Mobility. Routledge.
Clay, Kevin (2026). I Guess This Is Activism?: Youth, Political Education, and Free-Market Common Sense. University of Minnesota Press.  
Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education. Jossey-Bass.
Collins, Randall (1979/2019). The Credential Society. Columbia University Press.
Cottom, Tressie McMillan (2016). Lower Ed.
Cottom, Tressie McMillan & Darity, William A. Jr. (eds.) (2018). For-Profit Universities. Routledge.
Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? Routledge.
Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors.
Dorn, Charles (2017). For the Common Good. Cornell University Press.
Eaton, Charlie (2022). Bankers in the Ivory Tower. University of Chicago Press.
Eisenmann, Linda (2006). Higher Education for Women in Postwar America. Johns Hopkins Press.
Espenshade, T. & Walton Radford, A. (2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal. Princeton University Press.
Faragher, John Mack & Howe, Florence (eds.) (1988). Women and Higher Education in American History. Norton.
Farber, Jerry (1972). The University of Tomorrowland. Pocket Books.
Freeman, Richard B. (1976). The Overeducated American. Academic Press.
Gaston, P. (2014). Higher Education Accreditation. Stylus.
Gildersleeve, Ryan Evely & Tierney, William (2017). The Contemporary Landscape of Higher Education. Routledge.
Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty. Oxford University Press.
Giroux, Henry (1983). Theory and Resistance in Education. Bergin and Garvey Press.
Giroux, Henry (2014). Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Haymarket Books.
Giroux, Henry (2022). Pedagogy of Resistance. Bloomsbury Academic.
Gleason, Philip (1995). Contending with Modernity. Oxford University Press.
Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission.
Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price.
Graeber, David (2018). Bullshit Jobs. Simon and Schuster.
Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap. Harvard Press.
Hamilton, Laura T. & Kelly Nielson (2021). Broke.
Hampel, Robert L. (2017). Fast and Curious. Rowman & Littlefield.
Hirschman, Daniel & Berman, Elizabeth Popp (eds.) (2021). The Sociology of Higher Education.
Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University.
Kamenetz, Anya (2006). Generation Debt. Riverhead.
Keats, John (1965). The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.
Kelchen, Robert (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kezar, A., DePaola, T., & Scott, D. (2019). The Gig Academy. Johns Hopkins Press.
Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street.
Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities. Harper Perennial.
Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation. Crown.
Kraus, Neil (2023). The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement. Temple University Press.
Labaree, David (1997). How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. Yale University Press.
Labaree, David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess. University of Chicago Press.
Lafer, Gordon (2004). The Job Training Charade. Cornell University Press.
Loehen, James (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me. The New Press.
Lohse, Andrew (2014). Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy. Thomas Dunne Books.
Lucas, C.J. (1994). American Higher Education: A History.
Lukianoff, Greg & Haidt, Jonathan (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind. Penguin Press.
Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.
Mandery, Evan (2022). Poison Ivy. New Press.
Marginson, Simon (2016). The Dream Is Over. University of California Press.
Marti, Eduardo (2016). America's Broken Promise. Excelsior College Press.
Mettler, Suzanne (2014). Degrees of Inequality. Basic Books.
Morris, Dan & Targ, Harry (2023). From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University.
Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.
Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake.
Newfield, Christopher (2023). Metrics-Driven. Johns Hopkins Press.
O’Neil, Cathy (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction. Crown.
Palfrey, John (2020). Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces. MIT Press.
Paulsen, M. & Smart, J.C. (2001). The Finance of Higher Education. Agathon Press.
Piketty, Thomas (2020). Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press.
Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.
Rojstaczer, Stuart (1999). Gone for Good. Oxford University Press.
Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing.
Roth, G. (2019). The Educated Underclass. Pluto Press.
Ruben, Julie (1996). The Making of the Modern University. University of Chicago Press.
Rudolph, F. (1991). The American College and University.
Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.
Schrecker, Ellen (2010). The Lost Soul of Higher Education: New Press.
Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound.
Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth. Cornell University Press.
Simpson, Christopher (1999). Universities and Empire. New Press.
Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step.
Slaughter, Sheila & Rhoades, Gary (2004). Academic Capitalism and the New Economy. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Smyth, John (2017). The Toxic University. Palgrave Macmillan.
Sperber, Murray (2000). Beer and Circus. Holt.
Stein, Sharon (2022). Unsettling the University. Johns Hopkins Press.
Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class. Harvard University Press.
Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me.
Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. University of Chicago Press.
Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Basic Books.
Taylor, Barret J. & Cantwell, Brendan (2019). Unequal Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.
Thelin, John R. (2019). A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.
Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Trow, Martin (1973). Problems in the Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education. Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. 
Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation. Simon and Schuster.
Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree.
Veysey, Lawrence R. (1965). The Emergence of the American University.
Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.
Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid. Anchor.
Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure. Cypress House.
Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy.
Winks, Robin (1996). Cloak and Gown. Yale University Press.
Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.
Zaloom, Caitlin (2019). Indebted. Princeton University Press.
Zemsky, Robert, Shaman, Susan & Baldridge, Susan Campbell (2020). The College Stress Test. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Zuboff, Shoshana (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs. 

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

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Friday, December 12, 2025

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Nonprofits and Nothingness: Follow the Money

In the world of higher education and its orbiting industries—veteran-serving nonprofits, student-debt advocacy groups, educational charities, “policy” organizations, and campus-focused foundations—there is a great deal of motion but not always much movement. Press releases bloom, awards are distributed, partnerships are announced, and donors beam from stages and annual reports. Yet too often, the people who most need substantive support—servicemembers, student-loan borrowers, contingent faculty, low-income students, and other working-class communities—receive only fragments of what the glossy brochures promise.

To understand why, you need only follow the money.

  
The Neoliberal Philanthropy Trap

Over the last four decades, American nonprofit culture has been reshaped and disciplined by neoliberal capital. So-called “impact philanthropy” and “venture philanthropy” introduced a corporate mindset: donors expect brand alignment, flattering metrics, and ideological safety. The result is a nonprofit sector that frequently mimics the institutions it claims to critique.

Organizations become risk-averse. They avoid structural analysis. They sidestep direct confrontation with the powerful. They produce white papers instead of organizing. They praise the very elite funders who limit their scope.

The most severe problems facing servicemembers and veterans—predatory for-profit schools, Pentagon-to-college corruption pipelines, GI Bill waste, chronic under-support—rarely get the oxygen they deserve. Advocacy groups that rely on neoliberal donors often focus on “financial literacy” workshops rather than taking on the multi-billion-dollar scams that actually trap servicemembers in debt.

Student-debt nonprofits, similarly, lean into “awareness campaigns” and technocratic fixes that avoid challenging lenders, profiteering institutions, or federal policy failures. Many will deliver testimonials and infographics, but few will call out the philanthropic class whose own investments are entangled in servicing and securitizing student debt.

And when it comes to helping working-class people more broadly—those navigating food insecurity, unstable housing, wage stagnation, and the crushing costs of education—the nonprofit sector too often does what neoliberal donors prefer: it performs compassion rather than redistributing power. It focuses on individual resilience rather than collective remedy.
Appearance Over Impact

This creates a strange ecosystem in which organizations are rewarded for looking productive rather than for being productive.

• Events over empowerment.
• Reports over results.
• Branding over coalition-building.
• Strategy sessions over structural change.

The donor’s name gets its plaque, its press release, its tax receipt. The nonprofit gets to survive another cycle. But the problems—deep, persistent, systemic—remain unchallenged.

Nonprofits that speak too directly about exploitation in higher education risk alienating the very people who write the checks. Some are nudged away from naming predatory universities. Others are steered toward “innovation,” “entrepreneurship,” or “student success” frameworks that sanitize the underlying issues. Many are encouraged to “partner” with the same institutions harming the people they were formed to help.

In the end, we get a sector filled with earnest staff but hollowed-out missions—organizations doing just enough to appear active but rarely enough to threaten the arrangement that keeps donors comfortable and inequality intact.
 
What Could Be—If Nonprofits Were Free

Imagine a nonprofit sector liberated from neoliberal constraints:
Organizations could openly challenge predatory colleges instead of courting them as sponsors.
Veteran-serving groups could expose fraud rather than “collaborate” with federal contractors.
Debt-advocacy groups could organize mass borrower actions rather than hold polite policy forums.
Working-class students could find allies who fight for public investment, not piecemeal philanthropy.

We could have watchdogs instead of window dressing.
We could have mobilization instead of marketing.
We could have justice instead of jargon.

But as long as donor-driven nonprofits prioritize appearance over impact, we’re left with what might be called “nonprofits and nothingness”: organizations whose glossy public-facing work obscures the emptiness underneath.
 
The Way Forward: Independent, Ground-Up Power

Real change in higher education—on affordability, accountability, labor rights, and fairness—will not come from donor-managed nonprofits. It will come from independent journalism, grassroots organizing, debt-resistance movements, student-worker coalitions, and communities willing to challenge elite decision-makers directly.

Those efforts don’t fit neatly into annual reports. They don’t flatter philanthropists. They don’t offer easy wins. But they build the kind of power that higher education, and the country, desperately needs.

Until more nonprofits break free from the neoliberal donor leash, we should continue to follow the money—and then look beyond it, to the people whose work actually changes lives.

Sources
— Eikenberry, Angela. The Nonprofit Sector in an Age of Marketization.
— Giridharadas, Anand. Winners Take All.
— Reich, Rob. Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy.
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Sunday, December 7, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In each case, the company did not admit guilt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Halperin
Attorney and Counselor
Washington, DC

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]
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Monday, December 1, 2025

Trump's new housing policies could push another 170,000 people into homelessness (National Low Income Housing Coalition)

 

NLIHC President & CEO Renee M. Willis Statement - Litigation on HUD's 2025 CoC NOFO
December 1, 2025
NLIHC partners, members, and friends,        

This afternoon, the National Low Income Housing Coalition formally joined a federal lawsuit as a co-plaintiff, alongside Crossroads Rhode Island, Youth Pride, Inc., as well as the County of Santa Clara, California, San Francisco, California, King County, Washington, Boston, Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Nashville, Tennessee, and Tucson, Arizona, challenging harmful changes in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Continuum of Care (CoC) Program Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). We have also joined this suit alongside one of our closest national partners, the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Democracy Forward serves as lead legal counsel for the case, and we are working closely with the National Homelessness Law Center for strategic legal partnership and alignment. Public Rights Project represents the cities of Boston, Cambridge, Nashville and Tucson. Santa Clara County and San Francisco represent themselves, and the ACLU Foundation of Rhode Island represents all plaintiffs.

Why NLIHC is taking action:

The Continuum of Care Program exists to house people experiencing homelessness using proven, evidence-based solutions and strong local leadership. Yet, this NOFO introduces structural restrictions that contradict its stated purpose — capping permanent housing resources, weakening local decision-making, and threatening the stability of community response systems nationwide.

As many as 170,000 more people could be pushed into homelessness if these changes stand — not as an abstract number, but as real individuals, families, veterans, seniors, youth, and neighbors in every state who depend on CoC-funded housing and services to remain stably housed.


What this lawsuit means for our field and partners:

We are fighting to:

  • Prevent hundreds of thousands of people from losing their homes

  • Protect proven permanent housing interventions within CoC funding

  • Defend the ability of local communities to lead response strategies using data and evidence

  • Stand with municipalities and providers working to keep people housed, stabilized, and supported

We are especially grateful to our partners in the field — including the North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless — who have generously offered their expertise and perspective over the past several days. Their insights have helped us understand more clearly the community-level impact this NOFO would have on CoC partners and local housing systems. Their experience reinforces why this action matters, and we are sincerely grateful for their partnership.

Federal policy should be a source of housing stability — not a force that restricts it. We are stepping into this lawsuit because the people we serve cannot afford federal policies that weaken their communities’ ability to keep them housed.

NLIHC will continue to move forward responsibly, with care for our mission, our members, and the systems that protect households nationwide.

Thank you for your partnership in this critical moment.
 

With gratitude and resolve,
Renee M. Willis
President & CEO
National Low Income Housing Coalition
The National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated to achieving racially and socially equitable public policy that ensures people with the lowest incomes have quality homes that are accessible and affordable in communities of their choice.
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