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Sunday, January 4, 2026

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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Innovation and Reform

Higher Education Policy

Data Sources

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Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Higher Education Inquirer nears 2 million views, with more than 1.5 million in 2025

As 2025 draws to a close, Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is approaching a bittersweet milestone: nearly 2 million total page views since its founding, with more than 1.5 million of those views occurring in 2025 alone. At the same time, HEI will cease operations on January 6, 2026, bringing an end to one of the most independent and critical voices covering higher education in the United States.

The extraordinary growth in readership during 2025 came amid historic disruption across higher education. HEI documented the unraveling of federal oversight, the rise of hyper-deregulation, the expanding reach of for-profit colleges and private equity, and the worsening student debt crisis. These developments drove unprecedented interest from readers seeking analysis that challenged official narratives and corporate messaging.

HEI’s growing audience was fueled not only by comprehensive reporting, but by early warnings that were often ignored by institutions and policymakers. In August 2025, Higher Education Inquirer published a warning about escalating campus violence and political radicalization exactly one month before the Charlie Kirk investigation became public, underscoring the publication’s role as an early-warning system rather than a reactive outlet. That article was part of a broader series examining how extremist politics, lax security, and institutional denial were converging on U.S. campuses.

This foresight extended back further. In early 2024, HEI analyzed Project 2025, highlighting its implications for higher education, civil liberties, and democratic governance. At a time when much of the higher education press treated Project 2025 as speculative, HEI examined its explicit calls for mass deportations, the targeting of immigrants and international students, and the restructuring of federal agencies affecting education, labor, and research. Those warnings now read less like commentary and more like documentation.

HEI’s investigative work extended beyond reporting and analysis. Over the years, the publication submitted dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to federal and state agencies, uncovering critical data about institutional misconduct, federal oversight failures, and the financialization of higher education. These FOIAs often revealed information that universities and regulators preferred to keep hidden, from financial irregularities to internal policy deliberations affecting students and staff.

Labor reporting was another cornerstone of HEI’s mission. The publication highlighted the struggles of underpaid and overworked faculty, staff, and healthcare workers connected to colleges, drawing attention to systemic exploitation across public and private institutions. Similarly, HEI closely tracked borrower defense to repayment claims, scrutinizing how the Department of Education and loan servicers handled student complaints, debt relief applications, and policy reversals—often exposing bureaucratic dysfunction that had direct consequences for tens of thousands of students.

HEI’s editorial record reflects a consistent effort to connect policy blueprints to real-world consequences before those consequences became headline news. Coverage spanned a vast array of topics, including predatory institutions like the University of Phoenix, Trump-era housing policies, climate change, militarization of campuses, labor exploitation, and the privatization of public institutions. Notable published articles from 2025 include:

Despite its growing influence, HEI’s independence came at a cost. The publication has never been backed by universities, education corporations, or major foundations. A lawsuit involving Chip Paucek became the final breaking point, imposing substantial legal fees that HEI could not absorb. While the publication stood by its reporting, the emotional toll of prolonged legal conflict made continued operations impossible.

Reaching nearly 2 million views—most of them in a single year—is not merely a metric of success; it is evidence that HEI’s work mattered to a wide and engaged audience. As Higher Education Inquirer prepares to shut down, its legacy remains in the thousands of articles that documented institutional abuse, policy failure, and human cost within higher education.

HEI ends not because its mission was fulfilled, but because the structural forces it scrutinized proved difficult to survive. The readership growth of 2025 suggests that the need for independent, adversarial higher education journalism is greater than ever—even as one of its most persistent voices is forced to fall silent.


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Wednesday, December 24, 2025

The Expanding Crisis in U.S. Higher Education: OPMs, Student Loan Servicers, Deregulation, Robocolleges, AI, and the Collapse of Accountability

Across the United States, higher education is undergoing a dramatic and dangerous transformation. Corporate contractors, private equity firms, automated learning systems, and predatory loan servicers increasingly dictate how the system operates—while regulators remain absent and the media rarely reports the scale of the crisis. The result is a university system that serves investors and advertisers far more effectively than it serves students.


This evolution reflects a broader pattern documented by Harriet A. Washington, Alondra Nelson, Elisabeth Rosenthal, and Rebecca Skloot: institutions extracting value from vulnerable populations under the guise of public service. Today, many universities—especially those driven by online expansion—operate as financial instruments more than educational institutions.


The OPM Machine and Private Equity Consolidation

Online Program Managers (OPMs) remain central to this shift. Companies like 2U, Academic Partnerships—now Risepoint—and the restructured remnants of Wiley’s OPM division continue expanding into public universities hungry for tuition revenue. Revenue-sharing deals, often hidden from the public, let these companies keep up to 60% of tuition in exchange for aggressive online recruitment and mass-production of courses.

Much of this expansion is fueled by private equity, including Vistria Group, Apollo Global Management, and others that have poured billions into online contractors, publishing houses, test prep firms, and for-profit colleges. Their model prioritizes rapid enrollment growth, relentless marketing, and cost-cutting—regardless of educational quality.

Hyper-Deregulation and the Dismantling of ED

Under the Trump Administration, the federal government dismantled core student protections—Gainful Employment, Borrower Defense, incentive-compensation safeguards, and accreditation oversight. This “hyper-deregulation” created enormous loopholes that OPMs and for-profit companies exploited immediately.

Today, the Department of Education itself is being dismantled, leaving oversight fragmented, understaffed, and in some cases non-functional. With the cat away, the mice will play: predatory companies are accelerating recruitment and acquisition strategies faster than regulators can respond.

Servicers, Contractors, and Tech Platforms Feeding on Borrowers

A constellation of companies profit from the student loan system regardless of borrower outcomes:

  • Maximus (AidVantage), which manages huge portfolios of federal student loans under opaque contracts.

  • Navient, a longtime servicer repeatedly accused of steering borrowers into costly options.

  • Sallie Mae, the original student loan giant, still profiting from private loans to risky borrowers.

  • Chegg, which transitioned from textbook rental to an AI-driven homework-and-test assistance platform, driving new forms of academic dependency.

Each benefits from weak oversight and an increasingly automated, fragmented educational landscape.

Robocolleges, Robostudents, Roboworkers: The AI Cascade

Artificial Intelligence has magnified the crisis. Universities, under financial pressure, increasingly rely on automated instruction, chatbot advising, and algorithmic grading—what can be called robocolleges. Students, overwhelmed and unsupported, turn to AI tools for essays, homework, and exams—creating robostudents whose learning is outsourced to software rather than internalized.

Meanwhile, employers—especially those influenced by PE-backed workforce platforms—prioritize automation, making human workers interchangeable components in roboworker environments. This raises existential questions about whether higher education prepares people for stable futures or simply feeds them into unstable, algorithm-driven labor markets.

FAFSA Meltdowns, Fraud, and Academic Cheating

The collapse of the new FAFSA system, combined with widespread fraudulent applications, has destabilized enrollment nationwide. Colleges desperate for students have turned to risky recruitment pipelines that enable identity fraud, ghost students, and financial manipulation of aid systems.

Academic cheating, now industrialized through generative AI and contract-cheating platforms, further erodes the integrity of degrees while institutions look away to protect revenue.

Advertising and the Manufacture of “College Mania”

For decades, advertising has propped up the myth that a college degree—any degree, from any institution—guarantees social mobility. Universities, OPMs, lenders, test-prep companies, and ed-tech platforms spend billions on marketing annually. This relentless messaging drives families to take on debt and enroll in programs regardless of cost or quality.

College mania is not organic—it is manufactured. Advertising convinces the public to ignore warning signs that would be obvious in any other consumer market.

A Media Coverage Vacuum

Despite the scale of the crisis, mainstream media offers shockingly little coverage. Investigative journalism units have shrunk, education reporters are overstretched, and major outlets rely heavily on university advertising revenue. The result is a structural conflict of interest: the same companies responsible for predatory practices often fund the media organizations tasked with reporting on them.

When scandals surface—FAFSA failures, servicer misconduct, OPM exploitation—they often disappear within a day’s news cycle. The public remains unaware of how deeply corporate interests now shape higher education.

The Emerging Picture

The U.S. higher education system is no longer simply under strain—it is undergoing a corporate and technological takeover. Private equity owns the pipelines. OPMs run the online infrastructure. Tech companies moderate academic integrity. Servicers profit whether borrowers succeed or fail. Advertisers manufacture demand. Regulators are missing. The media is silent.

In contrast, many other countries maintain strong limits on privatization, enforce strict quality standards, and protect students as consumers. As Washington and Rosenthal argue, exploitation persists not because it is inevitable but because institutions allow—and profit from—it.

Unless the U.S. restores meaningful oversight, reins in private equity, ends predatory revenue-sharing models, rebuilds the Department of Education, and demands transparency across all contractors, the system will continue to deteriorate. And students, especially those already marginalized, will pay the price.

Sources (Selection)

Harriet A. Washington – Medical Apartheid; Carte Blanche
Rebecca Skloot – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Elisabeth Rosenthal – An American Sickness
Alondra Nelson – Body and Soul
Stephanie Hall & The Century Foundation – work on OPMs and revenue sharing
Robert Shireman – analyses of for-profit colleges and PE ownership
GAO (Government Accountability Office) reports on OPMs and student loan servicing
ED OIG and FTC public reports on oversight failures (various years)
National Student Legal Defense Network investigations
Federal Student Aid servicer audits and public documentation

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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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Thursday, December 4, 2025

Hyper-Deregulation and the College Meltdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

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HEI Investigation: FAFSA (Financial Aid) Fraud

26-00780-F  

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

26-00779-F  
The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting from the FSA Office of the Chief Information Officer, all security assessments, vulnerability reports, or risk analyses referencing the FAFSA processing system (FPS), identity verification, or bot-driven application spikes from 2020–present. This includes reports about warnings about bots, concerns about insufficient authentication, and breaches or near-breaches that the public never hears about.  (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/10/2020 To 12/02/2025)

26-00777-F  
The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is asking for any and all FSA records, reports, data dashboards, spreadsheets, audits, or communications from January 2023–present that track or analyze fraudulent FAFSA submissions, including synthetic identities, ghost students, identity verification failures, or suspected fraud rings. This includes documents prepared for FSA leadership, ED leadership, OMB, or the OIG. (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/01/2023 To 12/02/2025)

26-00732-F  
The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting all emails from the US Department of Education regarding selling off the student loan portfolio.   (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/10/2025 To 11/27/2025)

26-00023-F-IG  
The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting any and all correspondence between the ED-OIG and the University of Phoenix regarding unusual or suspicious FAFSA applications from 1/1/2020 and 11/26/2025 (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/01/2020 To 11/26/2025)

26-00709-F  
The Higher Education Inquirer is requesting any and all email correspondence between the US Department of Education and the Thompson Coburn Law Firm from January 6, 2025 to November 24, 2025.  We are particularly interested in the following areas related to higher education:
Gainful Employment
Bare Minimum Rule
Borrower Defense to Repayment
Student Loan Forgiveness
Title IX
False Claims Act
Federal Funding Freeze Litigation
DEI Executive Orders Litigation, the Dear Colleague Letter Litigation, and DOJ’s July 2025 Guidance on Unlawful Discrimination
Executive Order 14242 Directing the Closure of ED
Grant Termination
Rate Cap Policy Litigation
Student and Exchange Visitor Program Litigation
Legality of Nationwide Injunctions
Program Participation Agreement Signatory Litigation (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/06/2025 To 11/24/2025)

26-00697-F
The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting any and all correspondence pertaining to "unusual" or "suspicious" activity regarding FAFSA applications involving the University of Phoenix.  Phoenix Education Partners CEO Chris Lynne has recently acknowledged this issue.   (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/01/2024 To 11/23/2025)
 26-00697-F  
 26-00697-F  
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Monday, November 24, 2025

ED FOIA regarding Thompson Coburn Law Firm (26-00709-F)

The Higher Education Inquirer is requesting any and all email correspondence between the US Department of Education and the Thompson Coburn Law Firm from January 6, 2025 to November 24, 2025. 

We are particularly interested in the following areas related to higher education:

Gainful Employment
Bare Minimum Rule
Borrower Defense to Repayment
Student Loan Forgiveness
Title IX
False Claims Act
Federal Funding Freeze Litigation
DEI Executive Orders Litigation, the Dear Colleague Letter Litigation, and DOJ’s July 2025 Guidance on Unlawful Discrimination
Executive Order 14242 Directing the Closure of ED
Grant Termination
Rate Cap Policy Litigation
Student and Exchange Visitor Program Litigation
Legality of Nationwide Injunctions
Program Participation Agreement Signatory Litigation

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Friday, November 21, 2025

Phoenix Education Partners, FAFSA Fraud, and the Familiar Dance of Blame

When Phoenix Education Partners (PXED) CEO Chris Lynne publicly blamed the U.S. Department of Education for missing fraud in FAFSA applications—fraud that allowed the University of Phoenix to enroll individuals engaged in financial-aid misconduct—he likely hoped to redirect scrutiny away from his own shop. Instead, the maneuver sent up a flare. For many observers of the for-profit college sector, it felt like the return of a well-worn tactic: deflect, distract, and deny responsibility until the heat dies down.

The pivot toward blaming the Department of Education does not merely look defensive; it echoes a pattern that helped bring down an entire generation of predatory schools. And it raises a simple question: why is PXED responding like institutions that have something to hide?


The Old Script, Updated

The University of Phoenix, under PXED’s ownership, carries not just a long memory of investigations and settlements but a structural DNA shaped by years of aggressive enrollment management, marketing overreach, and high-pressure tactics. When the industry was confronted with evidence of systemic abuses—lying about job placement, enrolling ineligible students, manipulating financial-aid rules—the typical industry defense was to claim that problems were caused by bad actors, by misinterpreted regulations, or by a sluggish and incompetent Department of Education.

Those excuses were not convincing then, and they ring even more hollow now.

If individuals involved in financial-aid fraud managed to slip into the system, an institution with PXED’s history should be the first to strengthen internal controls, not pass the buck. Schools are required under federal law to verify eligibility, prevent fraud, and monitor suspicious patterns. Pretending that ED is solely responsible ignores the compliance structure PXED is obligated—by statute—to maintain.

Why Blame-Shifting Looks So Suspicious

Instead of demonstrating transparency or releasing information about internal controls that failed, PXED’s leadership has opted for a public relations gambit: blame the regulator. This raises several concerns.

First, shifting responsibility before releasing evidence suggests that PXED may be more focused on reputational management than on institutional accountability. If the organization’s processes were sound, those facts would speak louder—and more credibly—than an accusatory press statement.

Second, the posture is déjà vu for people who have tracked the sector for decades. Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, Education Management Corp., and Career Education Corporation all blamed ED at various stages of their collapses. In each case, deflection became part of the pattern that preceded deeper revelations of systemic abuse.

When PXED’s CEO adopts similar rhetoric, observers reasonably wonder whether history is repeating itself—again.

Finally, PXED’s argument undermines trust at a moment when the University of Phoenix is already under skepticism from accreditors, policymakers, student-borrower advocates, and the public. Instead of strengthening compliance, PXED’s messaging signals defensiveness. Institutions with nothing to hide usually take a different approach.

The Structural Issues PXED Doesn’t Want to Discuss

PXED acquired the University of Phoenix with promises of modernization, stabilization, and responsible stewardship. But beneath the marketing, core challenges remain:

A business model dependent on federal aid. The more a school relies on federal dollars, the stronger its responsibility to prevent fraud—not the weaker.

A compliance culture shaped by profit pressure. For-profit education has repeatedly shown how financial incentives can distort admissions and oversight.

A credibility deficit. PXED took over an institution known internationally for deceptive advertising and financial-aid abuses. Blaming ED only magnifies the perception that nothing has fundamentally changed.

A fragile regulatory environment. With oversight tightening and student-protection rules returning, PXED cannot afford to gesture toward the old for-profit playbook. Doing so suggests they are trying to manage optics instead of outcomes.

What Accountability Would Look Like

If PXED wanted to demonstrate leadership rather than defensiveness, a different response was available:

• Conduct and publish a full internal review of financial-aid intake processes
• Outline steps to prevent enrollment of fraudulent actors
• Acknowledge institutional lapses—and explain how they occurred
• Invite independent audits rather than blaming federal partners
• Demonstrate an understanding of fiduciary obligations to students and taxpayers

This is the standard expected of Title IV institutions. It is also the standard PXED insists they meet.

A Familiar Pattern at a Familiar Institution

Every moment of pressure reveals something about institutional culture. PXED’s choice to immediately fault the Department of Education—without presenting evidence of its own vigilance—suggests that the company may still be operating according to the old Phoenix playbook: when in doubt, blame someone else.

But in 2025, the public, regulators, and students have seen this movie before. And they know how it ends.

Sources
U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Handbook
Senate HELP Committee, For-Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success
Federal Trade Commission, University of Phoenix Settlement Documents
U.S. Department of Education, Program Review and Compliance Requirements
Higher Education Inquirer archives
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Thursday, November 20, 2025

Same Predators, New Logo: PXED — A $22 Billion Student‑Debt Gamble Investors Should Beware

Warning to Investors: Phoenix Education Partners (PXED) may present itself as a cutting‑edge solution in career-focused higher education, but it’s built on the same extractive infrastructure that powered the University of Phoenix. With nearly a million students still owing an estimated $22 billion in federal loans, backing PXED isn’t just a financial bet — it’s a moral and reputational risk.

PXED’s leadership includes powerful private-equity players: Martin H. Nesbitt (Co‑CEO of Vistria, PXED trustee, and friend of Barak Obama), Adnan Nisar (Vistria), and Theodore Kwon and Itai Wallach (Apollo Global Management). Also in the mix is Chris Lynne, PXED’s president and a former Phoenix CFO intimately familiar with UOP’s controversial enrollment and marketing strategies. These are not educational reformers — they are dealmakers aiming to extract value from a student-debt pipeline.






[Image: Power Player Marty Nesbitt]

Higher Education Inquirer’s College Meltdown Index highlights how PXED fits into a broader financialization of higher education. Rather than reforming the University of Phoenix, its backers have resurrected it under a new brand — one that continues to enroll vulnerable adult learners, harvest federal aid, and operate with considerably less public oversight. 

Whistleblowers previously documented that Phoenix pressured recruitment staff to falsify student credentials, enrolling people who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for federal aid. Courses were allegedly kept deliberately easy — not to teach, but to keep students “active” enough to trigger aid disbursements. Internal marketing also exaggerated job prospects and corporate partnerships (e.g., with Microsoft and AT&T) to entice students. 

PXED may lean on a three‑year default rate (often cited around 12–13%), but that number is deeply misleading. Many UOP students stay stuck in deferment, forbearance, or income-driven repayment, masking the real long-term risk of non-payment. This is not just a short-term liability — it’s a potentially massive, multiyear financial exposure for PXED’s backers.

There was a significant FTC settlement that canceled $141 million in student debt and refunded $50 million to some students. But the scale of harm far exceeds that payout. Untold numbers of borrowers still have unresolved Borrower Defense claims, and the reputational risk remains profound.

Beyond financial concerns, there’s a major ethical dimension. HEI’s Divestment from Predatory Education argument makes a compelling case that investing in companies like PXED — or in loan servicers that profit from student debt — is not just risky, but morally indefensible. According to HEI, institutional investors (including university endowments, pension funds, and foundations) are complicit in a system that monetizes students’ aspirations and perpetuates financial harm. 

For investors, the message is clear: Phoenix is not merely an education play — it’s a high-stakes, ethically fraught extraction machine built on a legacy of indebtedness and regulatory vulnerability.

Unless PXED commits to real transparency, independent reporting on student outcomes, and accountability mechanisms — including reparations or debt relief — it should be approached not as a social-growth story, but as a dangerous gamble.

Sources

  • HEI. “Divestment from Predatory Education Stocks: A Moral Imperative.” Higher Education Inquirer

  • HEI. “The College Meltdown Index: Profiting from the Wreckage of American Higher Education.” Higher Education Inquirer

  • HEI. “What Do the University of Phoenix and Risepoint Have in Common? The Answer Is a Compelling Story of Greed and Politics.” Higher Education Inquirer

  • HEI. “University of Phoenix Uses ‘Sandwich Moms’ to Sell a Debt Trap.” Higher Education Inquirer

  • HEI. “New Data Show Nearly a Million University of Phoenix Debtors Owe $21.6 Billion.” Higher Education

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Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Defenders of the Higher Ed Business: How Lawyers Shield a Broken Industry

In the long decline of American higher education, a certain class of professionals has quietly prospered—lawyers who specialize in defending institutions from the consequences of their own behavior. These attorneys rarely appear in public debates over student debt, predatory recruitment, or collapsing regional colleges. Yet their fingerprints are everywhere: in courtroom strategies designed to run out the clock, in motions that narrow the rights of borrowers, in settlement agreements that mask wrongdoing without forcing structural reform. They are the legal custodians of an industry that has spent decades avoiding accountability.

These lawyers often frame their role as neutral, simply providing representation to clients who need it. But the nature of the representation matters. When institutions mislead students, inflate job-placement claims, push them into unaffordable debt, or fire whistleblowers who object to unethical practices, these firms defend the institution—not the student, not the truth, and certainly not the public interest. Litigation summaries and public communications frequently present a parallel universe in which colleges are the victims, regulators are overreaching meddlers, and students who seek restitution are opportunists or pawns of political forces.

The legal work is highly lucrative. In many cases, struggling institutions spend more on their attorneys than they do on direct student support. Colleges on the brink of closure still find six-figure retainers to fight state attorney general investigations or borrower defense claims. Public institutions use taxpayer dollars to shield themselves from transparency, all while students—particularly first-generation, low-income, and working-class students—absorb the losses. Attorneys in this sector are acutely aware of the harms their clients may have caused, yet their work consistently prioritizes institutional preservation over student restitution.

The history of this defense strategy is well documented. In 2011, federal courts began seeing cases from former students challenging institutions for misleading claims, untransferable credits, and failure to provide promised training. Courts often compelled arbitration, effectively removing class action rights and leaving individual students to pursue costly and complex proceedings alone. This pattern set a precedent: institutional defense relied on procedural tools rather than addressing substantive misconduct. Between 2012 and 2013, state supreme courts upheld arbitration clauses that stripped students of collective redress, signaling to institutions that strategic legal defenses could block accountability. Students’ claims of misrepresentation, fraud, and breaches of enrollment agreements were repeatedly forced into private arbitration. The courts emphasized procedural enforcement over consideration of the underlying harms, allowing institutions to continue operating without public scrutiny.

From 2015 to 2018, the Department of Education’s Inspector General documented widespread mismanagement of federal Title IV funds, showing that hundreds of millions in federal loans were issued to students at institutions that were later found to have misrepresented outcomes or violated federal regulations. Lawsuits brought by former students during this period, including allegations under the False Claims Act, were often dismissed or compelled to arbitration. Institutions were shielded, while borrowers were left with debt and limited recourse.

In 2018 and 2019, state attorneys general filed enforcement actions against multiple institutions for fraudulent recruitment practices and misrepresentation of accreditation status. In almost every case, institutions relied on their legal teams to secure procedural victories: dismissal of class action claims, enforcement of arbitration clauses, and delays in settlements. While regulators attempted to intervene, the structural power of corporate legal defense delayed, diluted, or obscured accountability. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2021, students sued institutions for failure to provide adequate online instruction and for abrupt changes in course delivery. Defense attorneys successfully argued that enrollment agreements allowed these operational changes, resulting in widespread dismissal of student claims. Again, institutional defense won the day while students absorbed the financial and educational consequences.

From 2022 to 2025, the Borrower Defense to Repayment program and the SAVE Plan promised relief for students harmed by mismanaged institutions. Yet litigation and regulatory challenges have slowed implementation. Institutions and their attorneys have repeatedly used procedural maneuvers to contest forgiveness, compel arbitration, or delay repayments, leaving thousands of students in limbo while debt accumulates. Throughout this period, legal strategy has consistently prioritized institutional survival over student restitution. Arbitration clauses, procedural dismissals, and regulatory delay have allowed colleges and universities to maintain access to federal funds, complete mergers, or restructure under bankruptcy protection, all while leaving harmed students with debt, disrupted education, and minimal legal recourse.

These attorneys also help shape the narratives consumed by policymakers, journalists, and college trustees. Public-facing summaries often downplay institutional misconduct and amplify court decisions that limit student rights. They rarely acknowledge the emotional and financial devastation suffered by borrowers or the systemic risks created when institutions know their lawyers can absorb most of the blow. Instead, they champion a legal environment that treats higher education primarily as a business subject to claims risk, not as a public trust.

Justice, in this ecosystem, becomes a matter of resources. Students and former employees face a wall of corporate legal expertise, while institutions with long records of abuse continue to operate behind settlements and sealed agreements. Attorneys who could use their considerable skills to protect the most vulnerable instead use them to reinforce a system that extracts value from students and leaves them to fend for themselves once the promises fall apart.

The Higher Education Inquirer has long documented the College Meltdown: the closures, the debt, the failed oversight, and the human cost. But the meltdown is not only a story about administrators, investors, or federal agencies. It is also a story about the lawyers who defend the indefensible and who help maintain a higher education marketplace where accountability is optional and harm is routine. They may sleep well, but only because the consequences of their work are borne by others.

The question is not how they sleep at night. The question is how many more students will lose before the legal strategies that protect institutions are no longer enough to protect the industry itself.

Sources:

U.S. Department of Education, Borrower Defense to Repayment decision data, 2022–2025

Government Accountability Office (GAO), “For-Profit Colleges: Student Outcomes and Federal Oversight,” 2021

Department of Education Office of Federal Student Aid, Borrower Defense decisions, 2020–2025

State Attorneys General filings and enforcement actions against higher education institutions, 2018–2023

U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General, audits and reports on Title IV program compliance, 2015–2022

GAO report on arbitration clauses in for-profit colleges, 2018


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