Ambow Education Pushes AI Agenda Abroad While Raising Red Flags in the U.S.

Ambow Education, once linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is aggressively exporting its AI-driven education platform, HybriU™, to global markets—even as its footprint in the United States remains small and opaque. The company’s international ambitions raise questions about transparency, governance, and potential political influence.

Ambow’s recent partnership with Bamboo System Technology aims to scale HybriU’s AI-education ecosystem across Southeast Asia, touting a deeper technology stack and expanded distribution. Yet outside China, Ambow’s record is spotty, and critics warn that the firm’s rapid expansion may outpace oversight or educational rigor.

In the U.S., Ambow reportedly explored a partnership with Colorado State University (CSU), though details remain murky. Engagements like these, combined with its involvement with specialized institutions such as the NewSchool of Architecture and Design, suggest a strategy of targeting schools where oversight may be limited and innovation promises can be oversold.

That strategy has already seen major fallout. Bay State College, which Ambow once owned, officially closed its doors in 2024 after years of financial instability, regulatory scrutiny, and declining enrollment. The college’s demise, following Ambow’s acquisition and subsequent divestment, underscores the risks faced by institutions entangled with opaque foreign education firms that promise modernization but deliver financial collapse.

Despite these global ambitions, Ambow’s American presence is modest: a small office tucked in Cupertino, California, suggesting the company may be testing the waters in the U.S. market rather than committing to a major operational footprint.

Recent corporate moves add to the uncertainty. In October 2025, Ambow filed a stock offering for up to $80 million, a move that could significantly dilute existing shareholders and raise questions about its capital needs, liquidity, and long-term strategy. While the offering may be designed to fund global expansion of HybriU™, analysts have noted the lack of clear financial disclosures and the company’s history of volatile performance.

Promotional efforts also raise eyebrows. Former Adtalem executive James Bartholomew has been enlisted to boost Ambow’s profile, but whether his role is purely marketing or part of a broader legitimacy campaign remains unclear.

For U.S. institutions, Ambow’s history—including prior CCP ties, the collapse of Bay State College, and its aggressive share issuance—presents a cautionary tale: a company that combines ambitious AI promises with a murky past and minimal transparency. Ambow’s expansion illustrates a growing challenge in higher education—navigating partnerships with foreign edtech firms while safeguarding institutional integrity, regulatory compliance, and academic quality.

Sources: Ambow Education press releases, SEC filings, Bamboo System Technology announcements, Higher Education Inquirer reporting, and U.S. Department of Education data.

Authoritarian Plutocracy and Higher Education: New Moves under Trump

The term authoritarian plutocracy captures how higher education is being reshaped: rather than overt state control in classic fascist style, what we are witnessing is the systematic hollowing of regulatory protections, the transfer of public funding into private profit, and the disciplining of institutions and individuals by political fiat. In the most recent year, several policy shifts make this trajectory unmistakably visible.

Since assuming (his current) office, Trump’s administration has embarked on sweeping reforms and legislative changes that illustrate how deregulation and elite enrichment are prioritized over the welfare of students, lenders, and institutions. Legislative changes embodied in the Reconciliation Law (signed July 4, 2025) carry radical higher-education implications: it overhauls the federal student aid system; imposes limits on borrowing for graduate and professional students and for parent borrowers; reduces the number and generosity of income-based repayment plans; rolls back accountability measures aimed at protecting students from fraud; delays or reverts protections for those wronged by their institutions; and makes cuts that affect affordability and access. TICAS

One prominent change under the new law is the elimination of the Graduate PLUS loan program, replaced with new annual and lifetime borrowing caps for graduate and professional students. Parent PLUS loans likewise face severe new restrictions. Borrowers in many categories will lose access to multiple repayment plans now in use (e.g. ICR, PAYE, REPAYE, SAVE) and effectively be pushed into just two new repayment pathways: a standard plan and a new “Repayment Assistance Plan.” These reforms will kick in for new borrowers after July 1, 2026, and for current borrowers by 2028 in many cases. TICAS

Another significant shift involves interest and repayment policy for millions of borrowers. The Department of Education has restarted interest accrual on federal student loans under the SAVE plan as of August 1, 2025, following court rulings that blocked parts of the plan. This means those enrolled will begin seeing their loan balances grow again, while being urged to move to other repayment regimes that conform to legal constraints. U.S. Department of Education

Regulatory changes in other areas also reflect the same pattern. Final regulations published in early 2025 address Return to Title IV Funds (R2T4) and rules for distance education and TRIO programs, scheduled to take effect in mid-2026 unless otherwise noted. These rules both tighten and loosen oversight in ways that can benefit institutional actors at the expense of students—by giving schools more flexibility on refunds, changing how module-based courses are treated, and slowing implementation of reporting requirements. NACUBO Meanwhile, some proposed regulatory changes—in cash management (how institutions manage and use financial aid dollars), state authorization, accreditation—were withdrawn by December 2024, signaling a retreat from tighter controls. SPARC+1

Perhaps most emblematic is the ongoing effort to reduce or even dismantle parts of the federal oversight apparatus. In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretary of Education to “facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.” Simultaneously, a major workforce reduction was announced in the Department. Roughly half of its employees were targeted in layoffs or reassignments as part of a broader reorganization affecting Federal Student Aid and the Office for Civil Rights. A federal court blocked part of the mass layoff effort in May, but the direction is clear: less oversight, fewer protections, more discretion for institutions and private actors. Wikipedia

The cumulative effect of these changes is consistent with what authoritarian plutocracy demands. Borrowers now face fewer repayment options, steeper obligations, and less protection from predatory behavior. Institutions, freed from some regulatory strictures, may gain flexibility—and private firms (including lenders, servicers, edtech providers, OPMs) stand to benefit. The regulatory wind has shifted to favor profit and power; public accountability, student welfare, and equity are increasingly secondary.

In higher education, as elsewhere, what matters isn't only what laws are passed but what and who those laws empower—and what they disable. For students, faculty, and institutions without deep political connections or financial buffers, the risk is that higher education becomes less a public good and more a venture to be leveraged by the powerful.

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Recent Sources & Reporting

• “Provisions Affecting Higher Education in the Reconciliation Law,” TICAS, July 15, 2025 TICAS

• U.S. Department of Education press release on SAVE plan interest accrual policy, July 9, 2025 U.S. Department of Education

• “ED Finalizes Rules on Return to Title IV and Distance Education,” NACUBO, Jan. 2025 NACUBO

• “2024 U.S. Department of Education Negotiated Rulemaking,” SPARC Open SPARC

• “ED Finalizes Biden-Era Regulations, Withdraws Proposals Amid Transition,” ACE, Jan. 13, 2025 American Council on Education

• Reporting on proposed closure / layoff / reorg in the Department of Education 

The Higher Education Inquirer: Six Hundred Thousand Views, and Still Digging

The Higher Education Inquirer has crossed another milestone, reaching more than 600,000 views over the past quarter. For a niche publication without corporate backing, this is a significant achievement. But the real measure of success is not in page views—it is in the stories that matter, the investigations that refuse to die even when the higher education establishment would rather they disappear.

Since its inception, HEI has taken the long view on the crises and contradictions shaping U.S. colleges and universities. We continue to probe the issues that mainstream media outlets often skim or ignore. These are not passing headlines; they are structural problems, many of them decades in the making, that affect millions of students, faculty, staff, and communities.

Among the stories we continue to pursue:

• Charlie Kirk and Neofascism on Campus: Tracing how right-wing movements use higher education as a recruiting ground, and how student martyrdom narratives fuel a dangerous cycle.

• Academic Labor and Adjunctification: Investigating the systemic exploitation of contingent faculty, who now make up the majority of the academic workforce.

• Higher Education and Underemployment: Examining how rising tuition, debt, and credentials collide with a labor market that cannot absorb the graduates it produces.

• EdTech, Robocolleges, and the University of Phoenix: Following the money as education technology corporations replace faculty with algorithms and marketing schemes.

• Student Loan Debt and Borrower Defense to Repayment: Tracking litigation, regulatory shifts, and the human toll of a $1.7 trillion debt system.

• U.S. Department of Education Oversight: Analyzing how federal enforcement waxes and wanes with political cycles, often leaving students exposed.

• Online Program Managers and Higher Ed Privatization: Investigating the outsourcing of core academic functions to companies driven by profit, not pedagogy.

• Edugrift and Bad Actors in Higher Education: Naming the profiteers who siphon billions from public trust.

• Medugrift and University Medicine Oligopolies: Connecting elite medical centers to systemic inequality in U.S. healthcare.

• Student Protests: Documenting student resistance to injustice on campus and beyond.

• University Endowments and Opaque Funding Sources: Pulling back the curtain on how universities build wealth while raising tuition.

• Universities and Gentrification: Exposing the displacement of working-class communities in the name of “campus expansion.”

• Ambow Education as a Potential National Security Threat: Tracking foreign-controlled for-profit education companies and their entanglements.

• Accreditation: Examining the gatekeepers of legitimacy and their failure to protect students.

• International Students: Covering the precarity of students navigating U.S. immigration and education systems.

• Student Health and Welfare: Looking at how universities fail to provide adequate physical and mental health support.

• Hypercredentialism: Interrogating the endless inflation of degrees and certificates that drain students’ time and money.

• Veritas: Pursuing truth in higher education, no matter how uncomfortable.

These are the stories that make HEI more than just a blog—they make it a watchdog. As higher education drifts deeper into corporatization and inequality, we will keep asking difficult questions, exposing contradictions, and documenting resistance.

The numbers are gratifying. But the truth is what matters.

The Right-Wing Roots of EdTech

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Propaganda in Higher Education: Then and Now

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

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

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

The Debt Machine as Propaganda

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

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

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

Contemporary Battles

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

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

Why Critical Thinking Matters

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

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

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

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Sources

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

Jin Huang, Higher Education’s Harry Houdini

Ambow CEO Has Repeatedly Slipped Through the Fingers of Shareholders and Regulators

In the opaque world of for-profit higher education, few figures have evoked the mixture of fascination and alarm generated by Jin Huang, CEO—and at times interim CFO and Board Chair—of Ambow Education Holding Ltd. Huang has repeatedly navigated financial crises, regulatory scrutiny, and institutional collapse with a Houdini-like flair. Yet the institutions under her control—most notably Bay State College and NewSchool of Architecture & Design—tell a far more troubling story.

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Ambow’s Financial Labyrinth

Ambow, headquartered in the Cayman Islands with historic ties to Beijing (former address: No. 11 Xinyuanli, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China), has endured years of financial instability. As early as 2010, the company pursued ambitious acquisitions in the U.S. education market, including NewSchool and eventually Bay State College, often relying on opaque financing and cross-border investments.

By 2013, allegations of sham transactions and kickbacks forced Ambow into liquidation and reorganization. Yet the company repeatedly avoided delisting and collapse. Financial reports reveal a recurring pattern: near-catastrophe followed by minimal recovery. In 2023, net revenue fell 37.8% to $9.2 million with a $4.3 million operating loss. By 2024, Ambow reported a modest $0.3 million net income, narrowly avoiding another financial crisis. 

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Early Years: 2010–2015

From 2010 to 2015, Ambow aggressively pursued U.S. acquisitions and technology projects while expanding its presence in China. The company leveraged offshore corporate structures and relied heavily on PRC-linked investors. Huang’s leadership style during this period prioritized expansion and publicity over sustainable governance, leaving institutions financially vulnerable.

Despite claims of educational innovation, Ambow’s track record in these years included multiple warnings from U.S. regulators and questionable accounting practices that would later contribute to shareholder lawsuits and delisting from the NYSE in 2014.

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Bay State College: Closed Doors, Open Wounds

Acquired in 2017, Bay State College in Boston once enrolled over 1,200 students. By 2021, enrollment had collapsed, despite millions in federal COVID-era relief. In 2022, the Massachusetts Attorney General secured a $1.1 million settlement over misleading marketing, telemarketing violations, and inflated job-placement claims.

Accreditation probation followed, culminating in NECHE’s withdrawal of accreditation in January 2023. Eviction proceedings for over $720,000 in unpaid rent preceded the college’s permanent closure in August 2023. Bay State’s demise exemplifies the consequences of Ambow’s pattern: the CEO escapes, the institution collapses, and students and faculty are left in the lurch.

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NewSchool of Architecture & Design: Stabilization in San Diego

NewSchool, Ambow’s other U.S. acquisition, has faced persistent challenges. Enrollment has dropped below 300 students, and the school remains on the U.S. Department of Education’s Heightened Cash Monitoring list. Leadership instability has been chronic: five presidents since 2020, with resignations reportedly tied to unpaid salaries and operational dysfunction.

As of 2025, lawsuits with Art Block Investors, LLC have been settled, and NewSchool is now housed in three floors of the WeWork building in downtown San Diego. Despite receiving a Notice of Concern from regional accreditor WSCUC, the college remains operational but financially precarious.

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Questionable Credentials and Leadership Transparency

Huang has claimed to hold a PhD from the University of California, but investigation reveals no record of degree completion. This raises further concerns about leadership credibility and transparency. Ambow’s consolidated executive structure—Huang serving simultaneously as CEO, CFO, and Board Chair—exacerbates governance risks.

While headquartered in Cupertino, California, Ambow continues to operate with ties to Chinese interests. SEC filings from the PRC era acknowledged that the Chinese government exerted significant influence on the company’s business operations. Ambow has also expressed interest in projects in Morocco and Tunisia involving Chinese-affiliated partners.

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HybriU and the EdTech Hype

In 2024, Ambow launched HybriU, a hybrid learning platform promoted at CES and the ASU+GSV conference. Marketing materials claim a 5-in-1 AI-integrated solution for teaching, learning, connectivity, recording, and management, including immersive 3D classroom projections.

Yet there is no verifiable evidence of HybriU’s use in actual classrooms. A $1.3 million licensing deal with a recently formed Singapore company, Inspiring Futures, is the only reported commercial transaction. Photos on the platform’s website have been traced to stock images, and the “OOOK” (One-on-One Knowledge) technology introduced in China in 2021 has not demonstrated measurable results in U.S. education settings.

Reports suggest that Ambow may be in preliminary talks with Colorado State University (CSU) to implement HybriU. HEI has not confirmed any formal partnership, and CSU has not publicly acknowledged engagement with the platform. Any potential relationship remains unverified, raising questions about the legitimacy and scope of Ambow’s outreach to U.S. universities.

Ambow’s 2025 press release promotes HybriU as a transformative global learning network, but HEI’s review finds no verified partnerships with accredited U.S. universities, no independent validation, and continued opacity regarding student outcomes or data security.

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Financial Oversight and Auditor Concerns

Ambow commissioned a favorable report from Argus Research, but its research and development spending remains minimal—$100,000 per quarter. Prouden CPA, the current auditor based in China, is new to the company’s books and has limited experience auditing U.S. education operations. This raises questions about the reliability of Ambow’s financial reporting and governance practices.

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The Illusion of Rescue

Jin Huang’s repeated escapes from regulatory and financial peril have earned her a reputation akin to Harry Houdini. But the cost of each act is borne not by the CEO, but by institutions, faculty, and students. Bay State College is closed. NewSchool remains operational in a WeWork facility but teeters on financial fragility. HybriU promises innovation but offers no proof.

Ambow’s trajectory demonstrates that a company can survive on hype, foreign influence, and minimal governance, while leaving the real consequences behind. Any unconfirmed talks with CSU highlight the ongoing risks for U.S. institutions considering engagement with Ambow. For regulators, students, and higher education stakeholders, Huang’s Houdini act is less a marvel than a warning.

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Sources

• Higher Education Inquirer. “Ambow Education Facing NYSE Delisting.” May 2022.

• Higher Education Inquirer. “Ambow Education and NewSchool of Architecture and Design.” October 2023.

• Higher Education Inquirer. “NewSchool of Architecture and Design Lawsuits.” March 2025.

• Boston Globe. “Bay State College Faces Uncertain Future.” January 3, 2023.

• Inside Higher Ed. “Two Colleges Flounder Under Opaque For-Profit Owners.” October 18, 2022.

• Inside Higher Ed. “Bay State College Loses Accreditation Appeal.” March 21, 2023.

• GlobeNewswire. “Ambow Education Announces Full-Year 2024 Results.” March 28, 2025.

• Ambow Education Press Releases and SEC Filings

• Wikipedia. “Bay State College.” Accessed August 2025.

• Wikipedia. “NewSchool of Architecture and Design.” Accessed August 2025.

HEI and the Backstage of Higher Education

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

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

Pulling Back the Curtain

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

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

The Business of the Dream

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

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

The Hidden Curriculum

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

Our coverage includes:

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

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

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

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

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

From the Margins to the Archive

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

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

A Public Good Reclaimed

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

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

Sources

• The Higher Education Inquirer archives

• Whistleblower accounts

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

• Interviews with contingent faculty and student debtors

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

Smoke, Mirrors, and the HybriU Hustle: Ambow's Global Learning Pitch Raises Red Flags

On July 25, 2025, Ambow Education released a press statement heralding the launch of its HybriU Global Learning Network—a grand vision to connect U.S. universities with students around the world through AI-driven hybrid classrooms, immersive tech, and overseas support centers in places like Singapore and China. The announcement paints Ambow as a transformative edtech player capable of bypassing borders, red tape, and traditional learning models.

But for all its futuristic promises, the press release is long on hype and short on verifiable substance.

Ambow’s materials list no actual U.S. university partnerships. There are no student outcomes, no published evaluations, and no pricing models. Instead, the rollout appears to rest on vague invitations for licensing or revenue-sharing arrangements, alongside a photo shoot of stock images and boilerplate claims about AI, 3D environments, and "borderless" learning.

HEI's previous stories on Ambow Education are here. 

A Track Record of Trouble

Ambow’s track record hardly inspires confidence. Its U.S. acquisition, Bay State College, was fined by the Massachusetts Attorney General in 2020 for deceptive marketing and lost accreditation before closing in 2023. Another acquisition, NewSchool of Architecture & Design in San Diego, is under federal Heightened Cash Monitoring, has fewer than 300 students, and is embroiled in lawsuits over unpaid wages and bills.

Despite this, Ambow continues to market itself as a next-gen education leader while reporting zero dollars in research and development spending for three years running. Its executive leadership is unusually consolidated—CEO Jin Huang also serves as CFO and Board Chair—and its auditor is a little-known Chinese firm, casting doubt on financial transparency.

Universities Should Proceed with Caution

Ambow claims it can solve the international enrollment crisis for U.S. schools by providing overseas “learning centers” where students can engage in U.S. courses without needing a visa. It’s a seductive pitch in the wake of global travel restrictions, demographic cliffs, and state budget cuts. But unless Ambow can produce proof of academic rigor, data security, and actual delivery, U.S. institutions risk far more than bad PR.

So far, no university named in the company’s outreach has confirmed participation—including those Ambow has quietly courted, such as Colorado State University.

A Deafening Silence from Regulators

Following this latest press release, The Higher Education Inquirer sent detailed concerns and background information to:

• The Securities and Exchange Commission

• The U.S. Department of Education

• The U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party

• Multiple national and regional media outlets

None have responded.

Given the financial, academic, and geopolitical risks involved, this silence is as disturbing as the press release itself. If federal agencies, lawmakers, and the mainstream press won’t investigate edtech ventures like Ambow, who will hold them accountable?

The Pitch Doesn’t Match the Product

In an age where marketing often outpaces regulation and due diligence, Ambow’s HybriU project looks less like innovation and more like vaporware. It’s a business strategy built on perception, not performance.

Until Ambow can show real partnerships, transparent governance, and validated outcomes, universities would be wise to avoid becoming the next Bay State College.

Sources

Ambow Education press release via Yahoo Finance:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ambow-launches-hybriu-global-learning-100000841.html

Massachusetts Attorney General fine against Bay State College (2020):
https://www.mass.gov/news/ag-healey-secures-relief-for-students-of-bay-state-college

Accreditation loss and closure of Bay State College:
https://www.bostonherald.com/2023/06/01/bay-state-college-officially-closes-after-months-of-controversy/

Heightened Cash Monitoring database, U.S. Department of Education:
https://studentaid.gov/data-center/school/hcm

Ambow Education SEC filings:
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1489947

NewSchool of Architecture lawsuits (public docket research required for updates)

Shrouded in Silence: The Problem with Nondisclosure Agreements in Higher Education (DC Whistleblower)

Nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, are quietly undermining the values that higher education claims to uphold—truth, accountability, and the free exchange of ideas. Used by colleges, universities, and education-related nonprofits, these legal tools have become instruments of control. Rather than fostering environments of transparency and ethical responsibility, NDAs are used to conceal wrongdoing, silence dissent, and protect powerful individuals and institutions from public scrutiny.

This issue is not abstract to me. Years ago, while working for a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that claimed to serve the public interest, I was forced to sign an NDA. What I believed would be an opportunity to contribute to meaningful education reform turned into a lesson in how institutions manipulate legal agreements to suppress criticism. I was not allowed to speak publicly about unethical behavior I observed—behavior that directly affected low-income students and underpaid labor. That experience has stayed with me, and it mirrors the stories I now hear from others across higher education.

In today’s academic landscape, NDAs are often imposed on staff, faculty, and students at vulnerable moments—after reporting sexual harassment, exposing fraud, or simply trying to leave a toxic workplace. Institutions frame these agreements as standard procedure, offering settlements or severance in exchange for permanent silence. The reality is coercive: speak up and risk losing not just financial security, but career prospects and professional reputation.

Faculty and staff on contingent contracts—especially adjuncts—are easy targets for this kind of legal intimidation. Graduate students, already caught in exploitative labor arrangements, are often silenced through similar means. Survivors of sexual assault who report misconduct are sometimes pushed into signing NDAs as part of resolution agreements, which then prevent them from warning others or publicly critiquing the institution's response. Even undergraduate students who face institutional failure or discrimination can find themselves legally bound to stay silent.

NDAs have also become standard practice in for-profit and quasi-profit education operations. Employees at a number of edtech companies have described being pressured into signing agreements that prohibit them from disclosing questionable practices, including deceptive marketing, inflated job placement claims, and the targeting of vulnerable students for high-interest loans. Some are warned explicitly that any public statements—even years later—could bring legal consequences.

What makes NDAs so dangerous in education is their impact on public knowledge and democratic accountability. Institutions that receive millions or even billions in federal and state funding are able to hide systemic issues from lawmakers, regulators, journalists, and the public. Whistleblowers, once silenced, are effectively erased from the narrative. Patterns of abuse continue, protected by layers of legal language and institutional inertia. Journalists investigating misconduct in higher education—including those of us at The Higher Education Inquirer—frequently encounter potential sources who decline to speak on the record due to NDAs. The agreements don’t just silence individuals—they distort the historical and ethical record.

The use of NDAs also undermines government oversight. Agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education rely on insiders to report fraud and abuse related to Title IV funding. But when those insiders are bound by NDAs, they are forced to weigh the public interest against the threat of lawsuits. In this way, NDAs shield not only bad actors but also fraudulent systems that disproportionately harm students from working-class, Black, and Brown communities.

Legislative responses have so far been piecemeal. A few states have passed laws restricting NDAs in sexual misconduct settlements, but these measures rarely address the broader use of NDAs in cases of fraud, labor violations, or institutional abuse. Nor do they cover students, faculty, or contractors who are pressured into silence outside of formal settlements.

We need stronger federal protections for whistleblowers in education. We need laws that prohibit the use of NDAs by institutions that receive public funds. Accrediting bodies must stop ignoring the use of legal intimidation as a governance practice. And we need a cultural shift in higher education—a collective refusal to treat silence as professionalism.

As someone who once signed away my voice under legal pressure, I understand the fear and isolation that NDAs produce. But I also believe that silence, when coerced, is not consent—it’s complicity enforced by power. And in a system as dependent on public trust and democratic ideals as education, that silence comes at a cost we can no longer afford to ignore.

Forgetting Neil Postman

[For my good friend, a higher education executive who has seen it all, and suggested that all of us pause, take a look back, and think.]

Neil Postman first gained national attention in 1969 with Teaching as a Subversive Activity, co-authored with Charles Weingartner. In a period marked by war, civil unrest, and cultural transformation, Postman offered a bold challenge to the status quo of American education. Schools, he argued, were failing not because they lacked resources or rigor, but because they had lost sight of their deeper purpose. Instead of fostering critical thinking and civic engagement, they were manufacturing conformity through standardized tests, textbooks, and passive learning. Postman envisioned classrooms without fixed curricula, where teachers would become co-learners and facilitators, helping students develop the tools of inquiry and what he memorably called “crap detection.” It was a radical vision: education as an act of democratic resistance.

By the early 1980s, Postman had turned his attention to how media was shaping society—and deforming education. In The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), he claimed that television was dissolving the cultural boundaries between children and adults. Television, unlike print, made no distinction in content delivery; it treated all viewers as equal consumers of images and sensation. The consequences, he warned, were profound: children were becoming prematurely cynical while adults increasingly behaved like children. The medium, he believed, flattened developmental distinctions and eroded the cultural function of school as a place for guided maturation and ethical formation.

Then came Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985, Postman’s most widely read and enduring work. Written during the ascendancy of television and Reagan-era consumer culture, the book argued that television had transformed public discourse into entertainment. It was not merely the content of television that disturbed him, but its form—its bias toward speed, simplification, and emotional stimulation. In such a media environment, serious discussion of politics, education, science, or religion could not survive. News became performance, candidates became celebrities, and education was increasingly judged by its entertainment value. Postman lamented the way Sesame Street, often hailed as educational television, conditioned children to love television itself—not learning, not schools, not the slow, difficult process of study.

As the decade progressed, Postman began articulating a broader cultural critique that culminated in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992). In this work, he defined technopoly as a society that not only uses technology but is dominated by it—a culture that believes technology is the solution to all problems, and that all values should be reshaped in its image. Postman acknowledged that tools and machines had always altered human life, but in a technopoly, technology becomes self-justifying. It no longer asks what human purpose it serves. Postman noted that schools were being wired with computers, not because it improved learning—there was no solid evidence of that—but because it seemed modern, inevitable, and profitable. His question—“What is the problem to which this is the solution?”—was a challenge not just to education reformers, but to an entire ideology of progress.

In The End of Education (1995), Postman returned to the question that haunted all his work: what is school for? He argued that American education had lost its narrative. Without compelling guiding stories—what he called “gods”—schools could not inspire loyalty, discipline, or moral development. In place of narratives about democracy, stewardship, public participation, and truth-seeking, schools now told the story of market utility. They trained students for jobs, not for life. They emphasized performance metrics over philosophical inquiry, and they treated students as customers in a credential economy. Education, he warned, was becoming just another mass medium, modeled increasingly after television and later the internet, with predictable results: shallowness, fragmentation, and disengagement.

By the time Postman died in 2003, the world he had warned about was rapidly taking shape. Facebook had not yet launched. Smartphones had not yet arrived. Generative AI was decades from the mainstream. But already, education was being reshaped by branding, performance metrics, digital delivery, and venture capital. The university was becoming a platform. The classroom was being converted into content. Students were treated not as citizens in formation, but as users to be optimized. The language of education—once rooted in moral philosophy and civic purpose—had begun to sound more like business strategy. Postman would have heard the rise of terms like “learning outcomes,” “human capital development,” and “scalable solutions” as evidence of a culture that had surrendered judgment to systems, wisdom to code, and meaning to metrics.

Postman’s refusal to embrace digital culture made him easy to ignore in the years that followed. He never gave a TED Talk. He didn’t blog. He didn’t build a brand. He never even used a typewriter. He wrote every word by hand. In a world of media influencers, LinkedIn thought leaders, and edtech evangelists, Postman’s ideas didn’t fit. But the deeper reason we forgot him is more unsettling. 

Remembering Postman would require a painful reckoning with how far higher education has drifted from its public mission and democratic roots. It would mean admitting that education has been refashioned not as a sacred civic institution but as a delivery mechanism for marketable credentials. It would mean asking questions we’ve tried hard to bury.

What is higher education for? What kind of people does it produce? Who decides its purpose? What stories do our schools still tell—and whose interests do those stories serve?

Postman would not call for banning screens or abolishing online learning. He was not nostalgic for chalkboards or print for their own sake. But he would demand that we pause, reflect, and resist. He would ask us to think about what kind of citizens our institutions are shaping, and whether the systems we’ve built still serve a human purpose. He would remind us that information is not wisdom, and that no innovation can substitute for meaning.

As the Higher Education Inquirer continues its investigations into the commercialization of academia, the credentialing economy, and the collapse of higher ed’s public trust, we find Postman’s voice echoing—uninvited but indispensable. His critiques were not popular in his time, and they are even less welcome now. But they are truer than ever.

We may have forgotten him. But we are living in the world he tried to warn us about.

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Sources
Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)
Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)
Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995)
Postman’s archived writings: https://web.archive.org/web/20051102091154/http://www.bigbrother.net/~mugwump/Postman/

The Nation of Everything but Happiness

“Love our families? We live in a nation of broken homes. Walk in nature? We live in a nation of the obese. Read the great works? We live in a nation of the illiterate. Dream new dreams? We live in a nation of fear and desperation. We consume. We shop. We can have everything we want the next day—except happiness.”

These words, uttered by a disillusioned higher education executive, cut to the core of a national sickness. They are not just an indictment of American culture—they are a mirror held up to a society in collapse. Behind the marketing slogans and innovation-speak of American higher education lies a deeper rot: institutions that no longer produce wisdom, foster reflection, or cultivate the common good. They produce debt, anxiety, and compliant consumers.

In the 21st century, higher education became increasingly transactional and performative. Degrees were marketed like fashion, skills were bundled into micro-credentials, and students were rebranded as “customers.” Behind every glossy website lay crumbling adjunct faculty conditions, student mental health crises, and financial aid schemes rigged to entrap rather than empower.

This system did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the natural outgrowth of an economy where the line between marketing and meaning has disappeared, and where truth is whatever keeps the donor pipeline flowing. In this world, critical thinking is a threat, reading the great works is a waste of time, and loving one’s family is optional so long as the tuition gets paid.

The American dream, once tied to education, now runs through warehouses and fulfillment centers. You can click your way to convenience, but not to connection. Universities partner with Amazon, Google, and Blackstone, hoping some of that algorithmic magic will rub off. But what gets lost in the process is incalculable: imagination, community, citizenship.

Broken homes? A generation of young adults crushed by debt can’t afford to start families.

Obesity? PE is gone, recess is shrinking, nature is privatized, and students sit in Zoom classes fed by vending machines.

Illiteracy? College students now arrive without ever reading a full book—and many leave with diplomas having never done so.

Fear and desperation? Campus shootings, climate anxiety, unpaid internships, and the looming threat of being replaced by AI all feed into a student body running on caffeine, anxiety meds, and borrowed hope.

What do we tell young people today? That if they take out $100,000 in loans, hustle harder, and say the right things on LinkedIn, they might land a gig job in the "knowledge economy"? Or do we tell them the truth: that higher education has been captured—by corporate interests, by cowardice, and by a political system that rewards short-term metrics over long-term meaning?

We live in a country where you can overnight a yoga mat and a mindfulness app, but you can’t overnight purpose. The institutions that once claimed to cultivate the mind and soul have outsourced their very missions. Presidents are now brand managers. Professors are content providers. Students are monetizable data streams.

The businessman’s quote, raw and despairing, reminds us that the crisis is spiritual as much as it is structural. Higher education cannot fix everything, but it could be something more than it is now. A space to reflect. A place to reconnect. A tool for healing—not just hustling.

But not without a reckoning.

Because in a nation where we can have everything but happiness, the question remains: what is higher education for? And if it can’t help answer that, what’s left of it worth saving?

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Sources:

• Anonymous quote from higher education executive, 2025

• National Center for Education Statistics: Literacy and Outcomes

• American College Health Association: Student Mental Health Trends

• U.S. Department of Education: Student Debt Statistics

• Higher Education Inquirer investigations on academic labor, edtech partnerships, and institutional mission drift

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

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

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

A Dark Age in Plain Sight

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

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

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

The Robocolleges and the Rise of the Algorithm

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

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

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

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

Myth #1: The College Degree as Guaranteed Mobility

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

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

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

Myth #2: Innovation Through EdTech

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

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

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

Myth #3: The Digital Campus as a Public Good

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

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

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

Greed, Cheating, and Digital Amnesia

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

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

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

Myth as Memory Hole

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

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

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

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

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Sources and References:

• Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol

• Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed

• Christopher Newfield, The Great Mistake

• Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains

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

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

• SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

• Internet Archive reports on digital preservation

• ProPublica and The Century Foundation on OPMs and robocolleges

• Faculty union reports on librarian and archivist layoffs

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