Pyrrhic Defeat and the Student Loan Portfolio: How a Managed Meltdown Enables Unauthorized Asset Sales

In classical history, a Pyrrhic victory refers to a win so costly that it undermines the very cause it was meant to advance. Less discussed, but increasingly relevant to modern governance, is the inverse strategy: the Pyrrhic defeat. In this model, short-term failure is tolerated—or even cultivated—because it enables outcomes that would otherwise be politically, legally, or institutionally impossible. When applied to public finance, pyrrhic defeat theory helps explain how the apparent collapse of a system can be leveraged to justify radical restructuring, privatization, or liquidation of public assets.

Nowhere is this framework more relevant than in the management of the federal student loan portfolio.

The federal student loan portfolio, totaling roughly $1.6 to $1.7 trillion, is not merely an accounting entry. It is one of the largest consumer credit systems in the world and functions simultaneously as a public policy tool, a long-term revenue stream, a data infrastructure, and a political liability. It shapes who can access higher education, how risk is distributed across generations, and how the federal government exerts leverage over the postsecondary sector. Precisely because of its scale and visibility, the portfolio is uniquely vulnerable to narrative reframing.

That vulnerability was not accidental. It was constructed over decades through a series of policy decisions that stripped borrowers of normal consumer protections while preserving the financial attractiveness of student debt as an asset. Chief among these decisions was the gradual removal of bankruptcy protections for student loans. By rendering student debt effectively nondischargeable except under the narrow and punitive “undue hardship” standard, lawmakers transformed education loans into a uniquely durable financial instrument. Unlike mortgages, credit cards, or medical debt, student loans could follow borrowers for life, enforced through wage garnishment, tax refund seizure, and Social Security offsets.

This transformation made student loans exceptionally attractive for securitization. Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities, or SLABS, flourished precisely because the underlying loans were shielded from traditional credit risk. Investors could rely not on educational outcomes or borrower prosperity, but on the legal certainty that the debt would remain collectible. Even during economic downturns, SLABS were marketed as relatively stable instruments, insulated from the discharge risks that plagued other forms of consumer credit.

Private banks once dominated this market. Sallie Mae, originally a government-sponsored enterprise, became a central player in both originating and securitizing student loans, while Navient emerged as a major servicer and asset manager. Yet as Higher Education Inquirer documented in early 2025, banks ultimately lost control of student lending. Rising defaults, public outrage, state enforcement actions, and mounting evidence of predatory practices made the sector politically radioactive. The federal government stepped in not as a reformer, but as a backstop, absorbing the portfolio and stabilizing a system private finance could no longer manage without reputational and regulatory risk.

That history reveals a recurring pattern. When student lending fails in private hands, it becomes public. When the public system is allowed to fail, it becomes ripe for re-privatization.

A portfolio does not need to collapse to be declared unmanageable. It only needs to appear dysfunctional enough to justify extraordinary intervention.

The post-pandemic repayment restart, persistent servicing failures, legal challenges to income-driven repayment plans, and widespread borrower confusion have all contributed to a growing narrative of systemic breakdown. Servicers such as Maximus, operating under the Aidvantage brand, MOHELA, and others have struggled to process payments accurately, manage forgiveness programs, and provide reliable customer service. These failures are often framed as bureaucratic incompetence rather than as predictable consequences of outsourcing public functions to private contractors whose incentives are misaligned with borrower welfare.

Navient’s exit from federal servicing did not mark a retreat from the student loan ecosystem so much as a repositioning, as it continued to benefit from private loan portfolios and legacy SLABS exposure. Sallie Mae, rebranded and fully privatized, remains deeply embedded in the private student loan market, which continues to rely on the same nondischargeability framework that props up federal lending.

Crucially, these servicing failures cannot be separated from the earlier elimination of bankruptcy as a safety valve. In normal credit markets, distress is resolved through restructuring or discharge. In student lending, distress accumulates. Borrowers remain trapped, servicers remain paid, and policymakers are confronted with a swelling mass of unresolved debt that can be labeled a crisis at any politically convenient moment.

Under pyrrhic defeat theory, such a crisis is not merely tolerated. It is useful.

Once the federal portfolio is framed as broken beyond repair, the range of acceptable solutions expands. What would be politically impossible in a stable system becomes plausible in an emergency. Asset transfers, securitization of federal loans, expansion of SLABS-like instruments backed by government guarantees, or long-term conveyance of servicing and collection rights can be presented as pragmatic fixes rather than ideological choices.

A Trump administration would be particularly well positioned to exploit this dynamic. Skeptical of debt relief, hostile to administrative governance, and ideologically aligned with privatization, such an administration could recast the portfolio as a failed public experiment inherited from predecessors. In that framing, selling or offloading the portfolio is not an abdication of responsibility but an act of fiscal discipline.

Importantly, this need not take the form of an explicit, congressionally authorized sale. Risk can be shifted through securitization. Revenue streams can be monetized. Servicing authority can be extended indefinitely to private firms. Data control can migrate outside public oversight. Over time, these steps amount to de facto privatization, even if the loans remain nominally federal. The infrastructure, incentives, and profits move outward, while the political blame remains with the state.

This is where earlier McKinsey & Company studies reenter the conversation. Long before the current turmoil, McKinsey analyses identified high servicing costs, fragmented contractor oversight, weak borrower segmentation, and low political returns on administrative complexity. While framed as efficiency critiques, these studies implicitly favored market-oriented restructuring. In a crisis environment, such recommendations become blueprints for divestment.

The danger of a pyrrhic defeat strategy is that it delivers a short-term political win at the cost of long-term public capacity. Selling or functionally privatizing the student loan portfolio may improve fiscal optics, but it permanently weakens democratic control over higher education finance. Borrowers, already stripped of bankruptcy protections, lose what remains of public accountability. Policymakers lose leverage over tuition inflation and institutional behavior. The federal government relinquishes a powerful counter-cyclical tool. What remains is a debt regime optimized for extraction, enforced by servicers, securitized for investors, and detached from educational outcomes.

The defeat is real. It is borne by students, families, and future generations. The victory belongs to those who acquire distressed public assets and those who benefit ideologically from shrinking the public sphere.

Pyrrhic defeat theory reminds us that collapse is not always accidental. In the case of the federal student loan portfolio, what appears to be dysfunction or incompetence may instead be strategic surrender: a willingness to let a public system deteriorate so that it can be sold off, securitized, or outsourced under the banner of necessity. If that happens, it will not be remembered as a policy error, but as a deliberate transfer of public wealth and power—made possible by decades of legal engineering that began when bankruptcy protection was taken away and ended with student debt transformed into a permanent financial asset.

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Sources

Higher Education Inquirer. “When Banks Lost Control of Student Loan Lending.” January 2025.
https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/01/when-banks-lost-control-of-student-loan.html

U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid. FY 2024 Annual Agency Performance Report. January 13, 2025.

U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid. Federal Student Loan Portfolio Data and Statistics, various years.

Government Accountability Office. Student Loans: Key Weaknesses in Servicing and Oversight, multiple reports.

Congressional Budget Office. The Federal Student Loan Portfolio: Budgetary Costs and Policy Options.

U.S. Congress. Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 and prior amendments affecting student loan dischargeability.

Pardo, Rafael I., and Michelle R. Lacey. “The Real Student-Loan Scandal: Undue Hardship Discharge Litigation.” American Bankruptcy Law Journal.

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission materials on asset-backed securities and consumer credit markets.

McKinsey & Company. Student Loan Servicing, Portfolio Optimization, and Risk Management Analyses, prepared for federal agencies and financial institutions, 2010s–early 2020s.

Higher Education Inquirer archives on SLABS, servicers, privatization, deregulation, and student loan policy.

When College Eats a Third of a Household’s Income: The Most Expensive States for Public Higher Education in 2026

For millions of American families, the cost of attending a public four-year college has quietly crossed a dangerous threshold. In 2026, higher education in several U.S. states now consumes nearly one-third of a typical household’s annual income, before accounting for debt, healthcare, housing instability, or the reality that many families support more than one student.

The idea of “affordable” public higher education is increasingly detached from lived experience. Tuition alone no longer defines the price of college. Once room, board, transportation, and basic living expenses are added in, the real cost of earning a degree has become financially overwhelming for large portions of the working and lower-middle classes.

A new analysis compiled by Easy Media, based on a study conducted by University of Melbourne Online, reframes the affordability crisis by asking a more honest question: How much of a household’s income does it actually take to attend a public college today? By comparing total annual college costs to median household income, the study reveals where public higher education places the heaviest burden on residents—and where the promise of upward mobility is most fragile.

Affordability Is No Longer About Tuition Alone

For decades, policymakers and university leaders have pointed to tuition restraint as proof that college remains accessible. This analysis exposes that claim as incomplete at best. In many states, room and board costs now rival or exceed tuition, while transportation and personal expenses quietly push total costs into unsustainable territory.

According to the researchers, “What stood out wasn’t just where college is most expensive, but where it becomes hardest to afford relative to income.” States with lower median earnings are especially vulnerable. Costs that appear moderate on paper become crushing when wages fail to keep pace.

The States Where College Hits Hardest

Mississippi ranks first nationwide, with public college costs consuming 33.23 percent of median household income, the highest share in the country. While the total annual cost of $25,354 ranks only 27th nationally, Mississippi’s median household income—$76,308, the lowest in the U.S.—leaves families with little capacity to absorb even “average” college expenses. The crisis here is not runaway pricing, but chronic income inequality colliding with fixed education costs.

Vermont, ranking second, reflects the opposite dynamic. The state has the highest in-state tuition in the nation at $19,223, coupled with expensive on-campus housing. Total annual costs reach $35,131, second-highest nationally. Even with a relatively strong median household income of $105,936, college consumes 33.16 percent of earnings, highlighting how limited public options and high operating costs drive prices upward.

Kentucky places third, with college expenses consuming 32.75 percent of household income. Housing costs are particularly high, while median income ranks near the bottom nationally. Tuition alone may appear manageable, but the full cost quickly becomes prohibitive.

Pennsylvania, ranking fourth, stands out for its exceptionally high public tuition—fourth-highest in the nation at $17,909. Combined with housing and other costs, total annual expenses approach $33,000. Public higher education in Pennsylvania increasingly resembles private-sector pricing, even as household incomes struggle to keep up.

Michigan, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama, Ohio, and South Carolina round out the top ten, each requiring roughly 30 percent or more of median household income to cover a single year of public college. In several of these states, transportation costs rank among the highest nationally, reflecting long commutes, limited public transit, and hidden expenses that rarely appear in tuition debates.

Income, Not Geography, Defines the Crisis

One of the study’s most revealing findings is that geography alone no longer predicts affordability. Coastal states often criticized for high costs rank significantly lower once income is factored in. Meanwhile, states traditionally viewed as “low-cost” emerge as some of the least affordable because wages have stagnated for decades.

West Virginia offers a stark example. Despite relatively low tuition and total costs, the state ranks seventh overall because median household income is among the lowest in the nation. College may be cheaper on paper, but it is harder to afford in practice.

A Structural Failure, Not a Personal One

The researchers stress that affordability cannot be solved through tuition freezes alone. Housing, transportation, food, and basic living expenses now play an equal—often larger—role in determining whether college is financially realistic.

“In many cases, families are facing college costs that look manageable on paper but become overwhelming once income is considered,” the research team noted.

The consequences are already visible: rising student debt, delayed graduation, part-time enrollment, and declining participation among students from working-class backgrounds. Public higher education, long framed as a pathway to opportunity, increasingly functions as a regressive system—demanding a higher share of income from those with the least to spare.

The Question Higher Education Must Answer

If attending a public college routinely consumes 30 percent or more of a household’s income, the problem is no longer financial literacy or individual budgeting. It is systemic failure. This analysis underscores a widening disconnect between wages, public investment, and the true cost of college—one that threatens to further entrench inequality under the language of access and opportunity.

Until housing policy, wage growth, transportation infrastructure, and state funding are addressed alongside tuition, the promise of affordable public higher education will remain out of reach for millions of Americans.

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Acknowledgment

The data and analysis presented in this article were compiled by Easy Media, based on a study conducted by University of Melbourne Online. Easy Media contextualized the findings using publicly available data from the U.S. Census Bureau, EducationData.org, and the National Transit Database, helping to clarify how the true cost of college—when measured against household income—has become financially unsustainable across much of the United States.

The Decline of “Happily Ever After”: Teen Girls, Marriage, and Social Inequality

A profound shift is taking place in the aspirations of American teenagers. In a Pew Research analysis of 2023 University of Michigan survey data, only 61 percent of 12th-grade girls expected to marry someday, down sharply from 83 percent in 1993. Boys, in contrast, reported a stable 74 percent, surpassing girls for the first time. Alongside this, fewer teens anticipated having children or staying married for life. Only 48 percent of 12th-graders said they were “very likely” to want children, and belief in lifelong marriage dropped from 59 percent to 51 percent over three decades.

These figures are more than statistical curiosities; they reflect structural changes in the lives of young women and reveal how cultural, economic, and social inequality shape personal expectations. Access to education and professional opportunity has expanded dramatically for women, allowing them to envision futures independent of traditional marriage and family structures. Yet these gains exist alongside persistent barriers: economic instability, student debt, and unequal labor markets make long-term commitments like marriage and homeownership fraught and uncertain. For many girls, the choice to delay or reject marriage is not merely personal—it is pragmatic.

Cultural shifts amplify this trend. For decades, mainstream media promoted the narrative of “happily ever after,” equating personal fulfillment with marriage and motherhood. Today, stories about self-discovery, financial independence, and flexibility dominate the imagination of young women. In this context, marriage is no longer the default marker of adulthood or success; it is one of many possible pathways, often weighed against educational ambitions, career goals, and economic realities.

This evolution of expectations is deeply intertwined with inequality. Historically, marriage has often reinforced gendered hierarchies, particularly among working-class and minority women, for whom early marriage frequently constrained educational and career opportunities. Delaying marriage, or choosing to forgo it altogether, can represent a form of empowerment—but it also exposes young women to the structural vulnerabilities of a society where social support and economic stability are unevenly distributed. For those without family wealth or safety nets, the decision to prioritize education or autonomy over marriage is often a negotiation with risk rather than pure choice.

The broader social implications are significant. Declining enthusiasm for marriage may influence fertility patterns, reshape household structures, and challenge institutions built around traditional family models. For policymakers, educators, and social institutions, the question becomes whether systems will adapt to support diverse life paths or continue to privilege outdated models that assume early marriage and childbearing. For young women navigating these choices, the cultural shift represents both liberation and uncertainty, an opportunity to define adulthood on their own terms amid economic and social pressures.

As these teenagers mature, their choices may redefine what adulthood looks like in the United States. The decline in the “happily ever after” fantasy signals not a rejection of commitment, but a recalibration of priorities under the weight of opportunity, constraint, and inequality. It is a moment that reveals how deeply personal aspirations—love, marriage, family—are shaped by the structures, inequities, and possibilities of the world they inherit.

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Sources:
Ms. Magazine. “Actually It’s Good That Fewer High Schoolers Want to Get Married.” 2025. https://msmagazine.com/2025/11/20/high-school-girls-marriage

New York Post. “High school girls are shifting away from marriage and 'happily ever after,' expert says.” 2025. https://nypost.com/2025/11/25/media/high-school-girls-are-shifting-away-from-marriage-and-happily-ever-after-expert-says

The Times. “Jobs, porn and manfluencers: the real reasons girls don't want to get married.” 2025. https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/why-dont-girls-plan-to-get-married-f7hr8jgp0

The Five Pillars of the College Meltdown

Demographics

The first pillar of the College Meltdown is demographic decline. Following the Great Recession, U.S. birthrates dropped sharply, creating a smaller pipeline of traditional college-age students. Nathan Grawe’s projections and WICHE’s Knocking at the College Door reports point to a steep enrollment cliff between 2025 and 2029, with some regions—particularly the Midwest and Northeast—facing the most severe contractions.

Case Study: Dozens of small private colleges in the Midwest, such as Iowa Wesleyan University (closed in 2023), have already succumbed to shrinking student pools. These closures foreshadow the demographic cliff that will hit hardest in tuition-dependent institutions.

Economics

The second pillar is economic fragility. Tuition and fees have risen faster than inflation and wages, leaving families burdened with debt. Student loan balances now exceed $1.7 trillion, with many graduates trapped in lifetime debt peonage. State disinvestment has shifted costs onto students, while tuition-dependent small colleges and regional universities face existential threats.

Case Study: The collapse of Mount Ida College in Massachusetts (2018) illustrates how tuition-driven institutions can fail suddenly when enrollment drops and debt obligations mount. Similar financial stress has led to mergers, such as the consolidation of Pennsylvania’s state universities.

Integrity (Fraud and Trust)

The third pillar is integrity. Enrollment fraud has become a systemic issue, with ghost students, bots, and synthetic identities siphoning off Pell Grants and other aid. Documented losses exceed $100 million annually, but California officials estimate that nearly a third of applications in 2024 were fraudulent. Fraud not only drains resources but also distorts enrollment data, masking the severity of demographic decline and eroding trust in higher education institutions.

Case Study: California Community Colleges uncovered tens of thousands of fraudulent applications in 2021–2022, with bots and synthetic identities targeting federal aid. This distorted enrollment figures and forced institutions to spend millions on fraud detection systems.

Governance and Labor

The fourth pillar is governance and labor. Higher education has been corporatized, with growing reliance on Online Program Managers (OPMs), outsourcing, and profit-driven models. Faculty labor has been deskilled, with adjuncts and contingent instructors making up the majority of teaching staff. Administrative bloat contrasts with shrinking instructional budgets, and some institutions resemble “robocolleges” with minimal full-time faculty presence.

Case Study: The University of Phoenix, once the largest for-profit college, closed hundreds of campuses and shifted to online models heavily reliant on OPMs. Meanwhile, adjunct faculty at many regional universities report poverty wages and no job security, even as administrative salaries rise.

Culture and Public Trust

The fifth pillar is cultural erosion. Public confidence in higher education has plummeted, dropping from 57 percent in 2015 to just 36 percent in 2024. Skepticism about the value of a degree has grown, with alternatives like certificates, apprenticeships, and direct-to-work pathways gaining traction. Political polarization and media narratives of closures, mergers, and scandals reinforce the perception of a system in meltdown.

Case Study: Gallup polls show declining trust across political and demographic groups. Regional newspapers covering closures of institutions like Green Mountain College (Vermont, 2019) and Becker College (Massachusetts, 2021) amplify public skepticism, reinforcing the narrative that higher education is no longer a safe investment.

The Pillars Weakening 

The College Meltdown is not the result of a single factor but the convergence of demographics, economics, integrity failures, governance issues, and cultural distrust. Each pillar weakens the foundation of higher education, and together they accelerate its unraveling. Case studies from across the country show that the meltdown is not theoretical—it is already happening. Recognizing these interconnected forces is essential if policymakers, educators, and communities hope to address the crisis before the collapse becomes irreversible.

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.

Renting While Educated: The Housing Crisis and the Rise of the Educated Underclass

In the United States, a college degree once promised a path to stability — a steady job, a livable wage, and a secure place to call home. Today, that promise has fractured. Millions of degree-holders and would-be graduates find themselves unable to afford even modest housing, trapped in what can only be described as the educated underclass: people with credentials but without the economic security those credentials were supposed to guarantee.

The latest data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) makes clear that the housing crisis is not just about poverty — it is about the shrinking distance between the working poor and the working-educated. The gap between wages and rent has widened so dramatically that even college-educated workers, adjunct faculty, nonprofit staff, social workers, and early-career professionals are drowning in housing costs.

The Housing Wage and the Broken Promise of Higher Ed

According to NLIHC’s Out of Reach 2025 report, a full-time worker in the U.S. needs to earn $33.63 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment and $28.17 an hour for a one-bedroom. That’s far higher than what many degree-holders earn, especially those in education, public service, healthcare support, and the nonprofit sector.

The academic workforce itself is emblematic of the problem: adjunct instructors with master’s degrees — sometimes PhDs — often earn poverty-level wages. Yet the rents they face are no different from those of skilled professionals in high-paying industries.

Higher education promised mobility; instead, it delivered a generation of renters one missed paycheck away from eviction.

An Educated Underclass Renting in Perpetuity

NLIHC’s data shows a national shortage of affordable housing: only 35 affordable and available homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renters. While this crisis hits the lowest-income Americans hardest, it also drags down millions of educated workers who now compete for the same shrinking stock of affordable units.

This convergence — between the working poor and the working educated — reflects a structural breakdown:

• New graduates carry student debt while starting in low-wage jobs.

• Millennial and Gen Z workers face rents that have grown far faster than wages.

• Former middle-class professionals, displaced by automation and recession, re-enter the workforce at lower wages that no longer match their credentials.

• Public-sector and nonprofit workers do “mission-driven” work but cannot afford to live in the communities they serve.

Increasingly, higher education is not a safeguard against housing insecurity — it is a gateway into it.

The Spiral: Student Debt, Rent Burden, and Delayed Adulthood

The educated underclass faces a double bind:
High rents prevent saving, while student debt prevents mobility.

NLIHC data shows that renters who are cost-burdened (spending more than 30% of income on housing) or severely cost-burdened (over 50%) are forced to cut spending on essentials. For many degree-holders, this means:

• Delaying or abandoning homeownership

• Working multiple jobs to cover rent

• Moving back in with parents

• Delaying marriage and child-rearing

• Relocating constantly in search of slightly cheaper housing

This is not “adulting” — it’s economic triage.

The educated underclass is increasingly indistinguishable from the broader working class in terms of economic vulnerability, yet still burdened by expectations that their degrees should have delivered them stability.

When Housing Costs Undermine Higher Education Itself

The affordability crisis is reshaping entire higher education ecosystems:

• Students struggle to find housing close to campus, leading to long commutes, couch surfing, or dropping out.

• Graduate students and postdocs — essential academic labor — increasingly rely on food aid, emergency grants, and organizing unions just to survive.

• Colleges in high-cost cities cannot hire or retain staff because employees cannot afford to live nearby.

• Public institutions face declining enrollment because families see no payoff to degrees that lead to poverty wages and unaffordable housing.

If higher education cannot provide a pathway out of housing insecurity, its legitimacy — and its future — is in question.

Toward Real Solutions: Housing as an Educational Issue

Solving this crisis requires acknowledging a simple truth: housing policy is higher-education policy.
The educated underclass is not a natural outcome of individual failure; it is the product of a system that overcharges for education and underpays for labor while allowing rents to skyrocket.

Real solutions would include:

• Large-scale public investment in deeply affordable housing

• Expansion of rental assistance and housing vouchers

• Living-wage laws that reflect real housing costs

• Student-housing development tied to public colleges

• Forgiveness of rental debt accumulated during economic shocks

• Strengthening unions among educators, adjuncts, graduate workers, and other low-paid professionals

The promise of higher education cannot be realized while a degree-holder earning $20, $25, or even $30 an hour still cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment.

The Verdict: Housing Is the Fault Line of the New Class Divide

NLIHC’s data confirms what millions of renters already know: the U.S. housing market punishes workers regardless of education level, and higher education no longer protects against precarity. The educated underclass is not a fringe category — it is becoming the norm.

Until wages align with housing costs and the housing system is restructured to serve people rather than profit, the divide between those who can afford stability and those who cannot will continue to widen. And higher education, once marketed as the bridge to a better life, will remain yet another broken promise — one rent payment away from collapse.

Sources
National Low Income Housing Coalition, Out of Reach 2025
NLIHC Research and Policy Briefs
NLIHC Affordable Housing Data and Fact Sheets

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.

The Prestige of Partnership — and the Problem of Unclear Payoff

For more than a decade, 2U has presented itself as a premier intermediary between elite universities and the expanding global audience for online higher education. The company’s roster of partners includes some of the most recognizable names in academia, as well as a growing list of selective, mid-tier, and international institutions. On its public site, 2U highlights collaborations with universities such as Yale, Northwestern, North Carolina–Chapel Hill, Pepperdine, Maryville, and the University of Surrey. The message is unmistakable: if universities of this caliber trust 2U with their online programs, then students should as well.

These partnerships have fueled the impression that 2U-supported programs deliver high-quality, academically rigorous education backed by prestigious institutional brands. For many learners, especially working adults, international students, and career switchers, such arrangements offer a seemingly ideal blend: the name of an elite university, the flexibility of online learning, and access to fields where credentials are increasingly necessary.

Yet beneath the glossy presentation and impressive partner list, fundamental questions remain unanswered. Despite working with many of the world’s most respected institutions, 2U still does not provide sufficient data to determine the true value of the programs it supports. Even as universities lend their names and curricula, the real-world outcomes of students enrolled in 2U-powered programs remain opaque.

The core difficulty lies in the mismatch between the prestige of the institution and the limited transparency around program performance. For years, 2U issued annual “Transparency and Outcomes” reports designed to demonstrate impact and accountability across its portfolio. But the most recent report available to the public is from 2023. In the fast-moving world of online education—where competition has intensified, student expectations have shifted, and 2U itself has undergone significant financial turmoil—data that old is no longer a reliable indicator of the current state of programs.

This lack of updated reporting is especially notable given 2U’s recent trajectory. After years of rising debt and declining investor confidence, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2024. Although it has since emerged under new ownership with a streamlined balance sheet, questions persist about its future direction, the stability of its services, and whether its partnerships will endure in their current form. For universities, outsourcing key functions such as marketing, recruitment, student support, and technological infrastructure may expand enrollment and revenue, but it also raises concerns about the consistency and quality of the student experience—areas that become even more vulnerable when the partner company faces financial strain.

This structural opacity makes it nearly impossible for students, policymakers, or even universities themselves to determine whether these programs provide a meaningful return on investment. A degree or certificate bearing the name of Yale or Pepperdine may confer a level of brand recognition, but what does it signify in practice? Are students completing programs at comparable rates to on-campus peers? Are they finding jobs in their fields? Are they earning more than they would have without the credential? Are they satisfied with the instruction, advising, and support they receive? Without rigorous, current, and independently verified data, these remain open—and critical—questions.

The challenge is not solely financial or operational. It is also conceptual. The surge in online learning has created a vast gray zone between institutional brand and educational substance. While universities retain control over academic content, the underlying delivery mechanisms are increasingly intermediated by firms like 2U. Students may assume that an online master’s degree from a prestigious university carries the same weight as an on-campus equivalent, but the learning environments, student services, and community-building opportunities differ dramatically. In many cases, the online experience is shaped more by 2U’s systems and staff than by the university itself.

For prospective students, the implication is clear: a well-known university name is not a guarantee of value. For universities, the stakes are equally high. Partnering with a third-party company can expand their reach, but it can also blur the boundaries of academic identity and accountability. And for anyone tracking the direction of higher education more broadly, 2U’s situation serves as a cautionary example of how prestige can mask the absence of meaningful transparency—and how quickly the economics of online learning can shift.

Until 2U produces up-to-date, independently verifiable data about program quality and student outcomes, the value of its offerings remains an open question. The partnerships look impressive. The marketing is compelling. But the evidence is missing.

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Sources

2U Partners Page
2U 2023 Transparency and Outcomes Report
2U announcements on new degree partnerships and expansions
Washington Post coverage of 2U’s 2024 bankruptcy filing
PR Newswire statements on 2U’s financial restructuring and emergence as a private company

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.

Pete Hegseth, Authoritarian Drift, and the Shrinking Democratic World: What His Latest Rhetoric Means for Ukraine, Taiwan, Latin America—and for the Manufacturing of a New U.S. War

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s latest comments on US military strategy signal a willingness to concede strategic ground, democratic alignment, and even moral authority to China and Russia. His rhetoric is not isolationism so much as resignation, a public abdication of democratic commitments that authoritarians in Moscow and Beijing have been hoping to hear for years.

In Hegseth’s telling, defending democracy abroad is optional, alliances are burdens rather than assets, and the global contest between democratic and authoritarian systems is someone else’s problem. This shift, echoed by others within his political orbit, effectively clears a path for China and Russia to expand their influence unchecked. It is the kind of rhetorical retreat that changes geopolitical behavior long before any formal policy is announced.

For Ukraine, Hegseth’s posture is devastating. Ukraine is not only fighting for its own survival but also anchoring the principle that borders cannot be erased by force. Every time prominent American voices depict Ukraine as a “distraction” or a “European problem,” the Kremlin hears permission. It emboldens Russia’s belief that with enough pressure and enough delay, Western unity will fracture. When U.S. resolve appears uncertain, Russian aggression becomes more likely, not less.

The implications for Taiwan are even more dire. Taiwan’s security rests partly on deterrence—the sense in Beijing that an attempted invasion would trigger an unpredictable coalition response. Hegseth’s rhetoric eats away at that uncertainty. When influential figures suggest Taiwan is too distant, too complicated, or too costly to defend, they send a clear message to Beijing: Taiwan stands alone. That perception, even if strategic theater, is dangerous enough to destabilize the region. It emboldens Chinese hardliners who believe the U.S. is tired, divided, and ready to cede the Western Pacific. For Taiwanese citizens, the erosion of deterrence threatens to collapse the delicate equilibrium that has preserved their democracy for decades.

The damage is not confined to Eurasia. Latin America—long an arena of soft-power competition—is already shifting toward Chinese and Russian influence. As U.S. leaders telegraph indifference or geopolitical fatigue, Beijing and Moscow expand their economic, security, and technological footprint. Surveillance systems, infrastructure deals with opaque terms, paramilitary cooperation, and coordinated disinformation campaigns fill the vacuum Washington helped create. Countries grappling with inequality and political instability increasingly view China and Russia as stable partners—precisely because the United States appears to be backing away. Hegseth’s rhetoric accelerates this hemispheric reorientation.

China and Russia are also advancing what experts call a “4G war,” leveraging cyber operations to strike at critical infrastructure globally. Power grids, financial networks, transportation systems, and communication backbones are increasingly vulnerable to state-sponsored cyberattacks, which can be executed remotely, anonymously, and at strategic scale. These digital assaults amplify physical geopolitical pressure without conventional troop movements. In a world where the U.S. retreats rhetorically and hesitates militarily, authoritarian cyber campaigns gain a force-multiplying effect: they destabilize economies, undermine public confidence, and signal that authoritarian states can achieve strategic objectives without firing a single shot—while democracies debate whether to respond.

All of this unfolds alongside an unnerving domestic trend: the increasing normalization of deploying the U.S. military inside the United States for political and symbolic ends. The occupation of Washington, D.C., following periods of unrest—an unprecedented show of military force in the nation’s capital—has now become a reference point rather than an aberration. Calls for troops at the southern border have grown louder, more casual, and more openly political. The idea of using active-duty forces for immigration enforcement—long considered a violation of democratic norms—has seeped into mainstream discourse. These domestic deployments do not exist in isolation; they reflect a broader comfort with authoritarian tools at home, even as some political figures argue that defending democracy abroad is unnecessary. It is a worldview that diminishes democracy both outwardly and inwardly.

Compounding these geopolitical and domestic retreats is a disturbing pattern: the willingness of U.S. leaders to manufacture conflict abroad for political gain. In an era when corporate media outlets increasingly avoid stories that challenge concentrated power, The American Prospect continues to do the work journalism was meant to do. Few embody that mission more consistently than David Dayen. His Dayen on TAP newsletters have become essential reading for anyone trying to understand how political decisions intertwine with economic power and democratic fragility.

Dayen’s December 1st dispatch is a masterclass in clarity. While many newsrooms chase horse-race narratives and meme-ready outrage, Dayen focuses on something far more consequential: the construction of a new U.S. war. And disturbingly, it bears the unmistakable imprint of the media-manufactured Spanish-American War—false premises, theatrical moralizing, and elite financial interests waiting eagerly behind the curtain.

The justification being sold to the public is fentanyl trafficking, despite U.S. agencies confirming that fentanyl production in Venezuela is essentially nonexistent. The real audience is a narrow faction of right-wing Venezuelan exiles in South Florida whose political demands have long shaped Senator Marco Rubio’s foreign policy. With an administration drawn to action-based optics and largely unbothered by legality, the machinery of pretextual warfare is already in motion: lethal maritime strikes of dubious legality, deployed carrier groups, unilaterally “closed” airspace, covert operations greenlit, and the political runway being cleared for a possible land invasion.

Hovering over all of this is the unmistakable scent of patronage. The judicial approval of selling Citgo to Elliott Investment Management—Paul Singer’s hedge fund, tightly linked to Rubio’s political ecosystem—raises troubling questions about whose interests are truly being served. Dayen’s reporting suggests a war effort crafted not around national strategy, human rights, or hemispheric stability, but around satisfying a small, wealthy, politically potent constituency.

Yet perhaps the most troubling part of this moment is not only the drift toward authoritarian powers, the normalization of using the military inside the United States, or the manufacturing of new conflicts—but the near-total silence of American universities. Institutions that once prided themselves on fostering democratic discourse, civic literacy, and dissent now largely avoid discussions of foreign policy—particularly when such discussions might anger donors, trustees, or state legislatures. Faculty navigate precarious employment. Administrators fear political retribution. Students, drowning in debt and economic insecurity, have little time or institutional support to engage deeply with global issues. At the very moment when democratic norms are eroding at home and authoritarian influence is expanding abroad, the institutions charged with educating citizens have retreated.

If this trend continues, China and Russia will not simply gain ground. They will redraw the global map. The democratic world will shrink. The consequences will be felt long after the speeches, the staged outrage, and the fundraising cycles have passed. And as U.S. universities remain timid, unwilling or unable to confront collapsing democratic commitments, the vacuum deepens. In a world where silence is interpreted as acquiescence, higher education’s retreat becomes more than a missed opportunity—it becomes complicity.

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Sources

– David Dayen, Dayen on TAP, The American Prospect, December 1, 2025.
– Public statements and broadcasts by Pete Hegseth (2024–2025).
– U.S. Department of State and DoD briefings on Ukraine, Taiwan, and Venezuela.
– DEA and State Department assessments on fentanyl production in Venezuela.
– Court filings relating to the Citgo sale and Elliott Investment Management.
– Reports on PRC and Russian influence in Latin America (CSIS, Wilson Center, academic research).
– Analysis of PRC and Russian cyber operations (“4G war”) on global infrastructure (power grids, transportation, financial systems).
– Congressional statements and policy proposals on U.S. military border enforcement.
– Documentation and analysis of military deployments in Washington, D.C., 2020–2025.

HEI 2025: Over 1.4 Million Annual Page Views From Readers Across the Globe

Over 1.4 million page views from readers across the globe in 2025 reveal a simple but terrifying truth: the promise of a college degree is collapsing before our eyes. Cyber breaches, student debt spirals, for-profit exploitation, and failing oversight have combined to create a system that enriches the few while leaving millions exposed to financial, social, and personal risk. From elite endowments hoarding wealth to underfunded community colleges struggling to survive, higher education is no longer a ladder to opportunity—it is a battleground where power, profit, and policy collide. HEI’s reporting this year has lifted the veil on the forces reshaping American education, revealing a crisis that is urgent, systemic, and global.

Our most-read investigations laid bare a stark reality: a college degree no longer guarantees financial security. Graduates carry crushing debt even as wages stagnate and job markets tighten. Families struggle under the weight of rising costs, while communities confront the fallout of institutions that promise prosperity but deliver instability. The working-class recession is real, and higher education has become both a reflection and a driver of it.

Institutions themselves are showing alarming fragility. The University of Phoenix cyber breach highlighted how even the largest for-profit entities can collapse under operational mismanagement and inadequate oversight. Schools flagged for Heightened Cash Monitoring by the Department of Education illustrate a wider pattern of financial and administrative vulnerability. When governance fails, students suffer, public dollars are jeopardized, and trust in the system erodes.

Profit imperatives have reshaped the very mission of higher education. Fraudulent FAFSA claims, opaque financial practices, and political donations from for-profit entities reveal a sector increasingly beholden to investors and corporate interests. In this bifurcated system, elite universities consolidate wealth while underfunded community colleges, HBCUs, and MSIs struggle to survive. The promise of equal opportunity is under assault, replaced by a marketplace that privileges profit over learning.

HEI has also cast a global lens on these inequities. From Latin America to U.S. territories, higher education is entangled with political power, economic extraction, and social stratification. Internationally, the same forces of exploitation and inequity shape students’ futures, underscoring that the crisis is not merely domestic but systemic and global.

Yet HEI’s work does not end with diagnosis. Solutions are emerging. Federal oversight and transparency must increase, debt relief is imperative, cybersecurity and governance reforms are urgent, and reinvestment in historically underfunded institutions is critical. These measures are necessary to restore integrity and public trust in a system that has long promised more than it delivers.

As we enter 2026, HEI remains committed to relentless investigation and fearless reporting. We will continue to expose failures, hold power accountable, and illuminate both the inequities and the opportunities within higher education. Our 1.4 million page views from readers across the globe in 2025 reflect the urgent need for this work. Higher education is at a crossroads. Informed scrutiny, persistent inquiry, and uncompromising reporting are the only way forward. Hope is limited but not lost. With scrutiny, advocacy, and decisive action, higher education can reclaim its promise as a public good rather than a profit-driven system that leaves millions behind.

Sources and References

Higher Education Inquirer, various articles, 2025. U.S. Department of Education Heightened Cash Monitoring lists, 2025. University of Phoenix cyber breach reports, 2025. Investigations into FAFSA fraud and for-profit college practices, HEI 2025. Global higher education inequality studies, 2025.

The Educated Underclass and the Enshittification of Job Platforms

The Higher Education Inquirer has long examined how digital labor platforms shape the trajectories of college graduates. For years, Indeed, LinkedIn, and an expanding universe of niche job boards promised to democratize opportunity and connect graduates to meaningful work. Today, they increasingly represent something else: evidence of a broken system in which educated workers—often carrying significant debt—are funneled into precarious labor markets mediated by platforms whose incentives are misaligned with student success. What Cory Doctorow has described as enshittification is no longer an exception but the operating model.

Indeed’s trajectory is the clearest expression of this decline. The site began as a transparent aggregator designed to make employment searchable and accessible. Over time, it has transformed into a pay-to-play environment in which sponsored listings overshadow organic results, duplicates and recycled ads clutter searches, and misleading postings reduce trust. Users on both sides—job seekers and employers—report diminishing value even as the company extracts more revenue from each.

LinkedIn has followed a parallel arc. Once positioned as a professional network that expanded access and visibility, it now privileges those who can pay for premium placement or “boosted” visibility. The platform’s feed is increasingly dominated by engagement-optimized content, sales pitches, and algorithmic noise. Genuine networking—the discovery of mentors, colleagues, and opportunities—has been pushed to the background by monetized features and incessant upselling. Graduates hoping to build relationships now find themselves navigating a digital marketplace that treats their careers as data points to be monetized.

Niche job boards, often touted as more curated alternatives, have also succumbed to similar dynamics. As private equity money flows into the sector, these boards increasingly rely on subscription fees, visibility boosts, lead-generation schemes, and paywalls that frustrate both applicants and employers. The promise of specialization is overshadowed by the same structural pressures: monetization first, user value second.

For graduates—especially those from working-class backgrounds—the consequences are profound. They enter the labor market carrying debt, often underemployed, and reliant on platforms that promise opportunity while quietly undermining it. The search for stable employment becomes a cycle of misdirection: applying to ghost jobs, fighting algorithmic opacity, and competing in markets distorted by platform-driven gatekeeping. Instead of delivering upward mobility, digital labor platforms frequently reproduce inequality, masking structural failures in higher education and the U.S. economy behind glossy interfaces and “skills gap” rhetoric.

Employers, meanwhile, face their own frustrations: rising costs for visibility, declining applicant quality driven by algorithmic prioritization of click-throughs rather than fit, and a sense that recruitment has shifted from a relational process to a transactional one. The platforms that were supposed to streamline hiring have introduced new layers of friction, opacity, and expense.

The deeper issue is systemic. Digital labor markets now operate on extractive logic: workers and employers are commodities to be converted into revenue streams. For the educated underclass—graduates who followed the prescribed path but find the rewards collapsing beneath them—these platforms do not solve structural inequality. They obscure it.

Higher education institutions must acknowledge this reality. Career centers cannot simply direct students to LinkedIn or Indeed and hope for the best. Instead, institutions should cultivate critical digital literacy, teaching students how to understand the incentives and limitations of platform-mediated job markets. They must invest in direct employer engagement, build relationships that bypass intermediaries, and challenge the outdated narrative that degrees alone guarantee upward mobility. The task is not merely to help students navigate broken systems but to recognize how these systems perpetuate precarity.

The enshittification of job platforms is not a marginal story. It is a window into the lived experience of millions of graduates—and an indictment of an economy that relies on debt-financed education feeding into precarious labor. The Higher Education Inquirer will continue to track these developments, expose the structural forces behind them, and advocate for approaches that put students and workers before platform profits.

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Sources

Cory Doctorow, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso, 2023).
Cory Doctorow, “Tiktok’s Enshittification,” Pluralistic (2023).
David Streitfeld, “The Cost of Posting a Job on Indeed Keeps Rising,” New York Times, 2022.
Emily Stewart, “LinkedIn Has a Spam Problem,” Vox, 2023.
Suresh Naidu and Eric Posner, Labor Market Power (2024).
Annie Lowrey, “The College Debt Crisis Is Now a Labor Crisis,” The Atlantic, 2022.
Philipp Staab, Digital Capitalism (Polity, 2019).
Alex Hern, “Job Platforms and the Algorithmic Trap,” The Guardian, 2021.
Higher Education Inquirer archives on digital labor markets, platform capitalism, and the educated underclass.