The Educated Underclass Without Borders

Gary Roth’s The Educated Underclass describes a growing population of college-educated people who, despite credentials and effort, are increasingly locked out of stable, dignified work. While Roth’s analysis focuses primarily on the United States, the framework extends naturally—and urgently—to international students educated in the U.S. and to the global labor markets they enter after graduation. When immigration regimes, artificial intelligence, and comparative higher education systems are considered together, the educated underclass emerges not as a national failure, but as a transnational condition produced by modern higher education itself.

U.S. colleges and universities aggressively recruit international students, presenting the American degree as a global passport to opportunity. These students pay higher tuition, subsidize institutional budgets, and enhance global prestige. What is far less visible is that access to the U.S. labor market after graduation is narrow, temporary, and increasingly unstable. Programs such as Optional Practical Training and the H-1B visa tie legal status to continuous employment, transforming graduates into a compliant workforce with little leverage. Job loss does not merely mean unemployment; it can mean removal from the country.

Indian students in STEM fields illustrate this dynamic clearly. Drawn by promises of innovation and demand, they enter graduate programs in computer science, engineering, and data analytics, only to find themselves funneled into a lottery-based visa system dominated by outsourcing firms and consulting intermediaries. Visa dependency suppresses wages, discourages job mobility, and creates a workforce that is educated but structurally insecure. Roth’s educated underclass is visible here, but intensified by deportability.

Artificial intelligence compounds this precarity. Entry-level technical and analytical roles—software testing, junior programming, data cleaning, research assistance—are increasingly automated or augmented. These were precisely the jobs that once absorbed international graduates. AI-driven labor contraction now collides with rigid visa timelines, turning technological displacement into enforced exit. Immigration policy quietly performs the work of labor market triage.

Chinese students in business, economics, and the social sciences encounter a different version of the same trap. U.S. employers are often reluctant to sponsor visas outside STEM, while Chinese labor markets are saturated with domestically educated elites. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions—intensified during the Trump administration—have normalized suspicion toward Chinese students and scholars, particularly in research-adjacent fields. The American degree, once a clear marker of distinction, increasingly yields managerial precarity, contract work, or prolonged dependence on family support.

China’s own higher education system complicates this picture. Massive state investment has expanded elite universities and research capacity, producing millions of highly credentialed graduates each year. Yet employment growth has not kept pace. Underemployment among Chinese graduates has become routine, and returnees from U.S. programs often find that their foreign credentials no longer guarantee elite status. In both systems, education expands faster than secure work, producing surplus aspiration and managed disappointment.

Canada is often presented as a counterexample to U.S. hostility toward international students, but its outcomes reveal similar structural dynamics. Canadian universities rely heavily on international tuition, while immigration pathways—though more predictable—still channel graduates into precarious labor markets. Many international students end up in low-wage service or contract work unrelated to their degrees while awaiting permanent residency. At the same time, domestic Canadian graduates face rising competition for limited professional roles, particularly in urban centers. The result is not inclusion, but stratified precarity distributed across citizenship lines.

These global dynamics have domestic consequences that are rarely acknowledged honestly. International students and foreign graduates are increasingly perceived as occupying educational and professional positions that might otherwise go to people whose families have lived in the United States for generations. In elite universities, graduate programs, and competitive labor pipelines, institutions often prefer international applicants who pay full tuition, arrive pre-trained by global inequality, and are more willing to accept insecure work.

For historically rooted communities—Black Americans, Indigenous peoples, and long-established working-class families—the resentment is especially acute. After centuries of exclusion from education and professional employment, they are told that opportunity is scarce and must now be globally competitive. The contradiction is profound: a nation that never fully delivered educational justice at home markets opportunity abroad while declaring it unattainable domestically.

Trump-era immigration policies exploited this tension by framing foreign students and workers as threats rather than as participants in a system designed by elites. Travel bans, visa restrictions, attacks on OPT, and open hostility toward immigrants transformed structural failure into cultural conflict. Yet the animosity did not originate with Trump. It reflects decades of policy choices that expanded higher education without expanding secure employment, substituted global labor arbitrage for domestic investment, and left working- and middle-class Americans to absorb the losses.

Universities play a central role in sustaining this arrangement. They function as global sorting machines, extracting tuition from abroad, conferring credentials with declining labor-market value, and disclaiming responsibility for outcomes shaped by immigration law and AI-driven contraction. Career services rarely confront these realities directly. Transparency would threaten enrollment pipelines, so silence prevails.

In Roth’s terms, this enlarges the educated underclass while fracturing it internally. Domestic and foreign graduates are pitted against one another for shrinking footholds, even as both experience debt, insecurity, and diminishing returns on education. The conflict is horizontal, while power remains vertical.

The educated underclass is no longer emerging. It is already global, credentialed, indebted, and increasingly unnecessary to the systems that trained it. Until institutions, employers, and governments in the U.S., Canada, China, and beyond are held accountable for the scarcity they engineer, higher education will continue to function not as a ladder to mobility, but as a mechanism for managing inequality across borders.

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Sources

Gary Roth, The Educated Underclass
Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid
Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness
OECD, Education at a Glance
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, OPT and H-1B program materials
National Foundation for American Policy, reports on H-1B labor markets
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, credential inflation studies
International Labour Organization, global youth and graduate employment reports
China Ministry of Education, graduate employment statistics
Statistics Canada, international students and labor market outcomes
David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs
Richard Wolff, writings on global labor surplus and credentialism

Beyond the College Meltdown: Moral Decay, Dehumanization, and the Failure of Courage (Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee)

At the Higher Education Inquirer, our focus on the college meltdown has always pointed beyond collapsing enrollments, rising tuition, and institutional dysfunction. Higher education has served as a warning signal — a visible manifestation of a far deeper crisis: the moral decay and dehumanization of society, compounded by a profound failure of courage among those with the greatest power and resources.

This concern predates the current moment. Through our earlier work at American Injustice, we chronicled how American institutions steadily abandoned ethical responsibility in favor of profit, prestige, and political convenience. What is happening in higher education today is not an anomaly. It is the predictable outcome of decades of moral retreat by elites who benefit from the system while refusing to challenge its injustices.

Permanent War and the Moral Abdication of Leadership

Wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and Venezuela reveal a world in which human suffering has been normalized and strategically managed rather than confronted. Civilian lives are reduced to abstractions, filtered through geopolitical narratives and sanitized media frames. What is most striking is not only the violence itself, but the ethical cowardice of leadership.

University presidents, policymakers in Washington, and financial and technological elites rarely speak with moral clarity about war and its human costs. Institutions that claim to value human life and critical inquiry remain silent, hedging statements to avoid donor backlash or political scrutiny. The result is not neutrality, but complicity — a tacit acceptance that power matters more than people.

Climate Collapse and the Silence of Those Who Know Better

Climate change represents an existential moral challenge, yet it has been met with astonishing timidity by those most capable of leading. Universities produce the research, model the risks, and educate the future — yet many remain financially entangled with fossil fuel interests and unwilling to confront the implications of their own findings.

Student demands for divestment and climate accountability are often treated as public-relations problems rather than ethical imperatives. University presidents issue vague commitments while continuing business as usual. In Washington, legislation stalls. On Wall Street, climate risk is managed as a portfolio concern rather than a human catastrophe. In Silicon Valley, technological “solutions” are offered in place of systemic change.

This is not ignorance. It is cowardice disguised as pragmatism.

The Suppression of Student Protest and the Fear of Moral Clarity

The moral vacuum at the top becomes most visible when students attempt to fill it. Historically, student movements have pushed institutions toward justice — against segregation, apartheid, and unjust wars. Today, however, student protest is increasingly criminalized.

Peaceful encampments are dismantled. Students are arrested or suspended. Faculty are intimidated. Surveillance tools track dissent. University leaders invoke “safety” and “order” while outsourcing enforcement to police and private security. The message is unmistakable: moral engagement is welcome only when it does not challenge power.

This is not leadership. It is risk aversion elevated to institutional doctrine.

Mass Surveillance and the Bureaucratization of Fear

The expansion of mass surveillance further reflects elite moral failure. From campuses to corporations, human beings are monitored, quantified, and managed. Surveillance is justified as efficiency or security, but its deeper function is control — discouraging dissent, creativity, and ethical risk-taking.

Leaders who claim to champion innovation quietly accept systems that undermine autonomy and erode trust. In higher education, surveillance replaces mentorship; compliance replaces curiosity. A culture of fear takes root where moral courage once should have flourished.

Inequality and the Insulation of Elites from Consequence

Extreme inequality enables this cowardice. Those at the top are shielded from the consequences of their decisions. University presidents collect compensation packages while adjuncts struggle to survive. Wall Street profits from instability it helps create. Silicon Valley builds tools that reshape society without accountability. Washington dithers while communities fracture.

When elites are insulated, ethical standards erode. Moral responsibility becomes optional — something to be invoked rhetorically but avoided in practice.

Social Media, AI, and the Automation of Moral Evasion

Social media and Artificial Intelligence accelerate dehumanization while providing cover for inaction. Platforms reward outrage without responsibility. Algorithms make decisions without accountability. Leaders defer to “systems” and “processes” rather than exercising judgment.

In higher education, AI threatens to further distance leaders from the human consequences of their choices — allowing automation to replace care, metrics to replace wisdom, and efficiency to replace ethics.

The Crisis Beneath the Crisis

The college meltdown is not simply a failure of policy or finance. It is a failure of moral leadership. Those with the most power — university presidents, elected officials, financiers, and technologists — have repeatedly chosen caution over conscience, reputation over responsibility, and silence over truth.

War without moral reckoning. Climate collapse without leadership. Protest without protection. Surveillance without consent. Inequality without accountability.

These are not accidents. They are the results of decisions made — and avoided — by people who know better.

Toward Moral Courage and Rehumanization

Rehumanization begins with courage. It requires leaders willing to risk prestige, funding, and influence in defense of human dignity. Higher education should be a site of ethical leadership, not an echo of elite fear.

This means defending student protest, confronting climate responsibility honestly, rejecting dehumanizing technologies, and placing human well-being above institutional self-preservation. It means leaders speaking plainly about injustice — even when it is inconvenient.

Our concern at Higher Education Inquirer — and long before that, at American Injustice — has always been this: What happens to a society when those with the greatest power lack the courage to use it ethically?

Until that question is confronted, the college meltdown will remain only one visible fracture in a far deeper moral collapse.

How Demographics Could Elevate the Political Stakes of Student Loan Debt in 2028 and Beyond

Student loan debt has been a defining economic and political issue in the United States for over a decade. As of 2025, Americans owe nearly $1.8 trillion in student loans, with roughly 42–45 million borrowers carrying federal debt and average balances exceeding $39,000 per borrower. Delinquency rates have surged since repayment reporting resumed, with more than one in five borrowers behind on payments, and millions at risk of default. These financial pressures are now rippling through credit markets and household budgets, especially for younger, middle-aged, and lower-income borrowers. While student debt already garners public attention, shifting demographic trends and mounting economic pressures promise to reshape its political weight in the coming years unless comprehensive changes are enacted.

The largest cohort of student borrowers today consists of Millennials and older members of Generation Z, many aged between 25 and 45. These are prime years for political engagement, as individuals are more likely to vote, form households, buy homes, and shape community priorities. In 2028, this group will be even more politically active, navigating careers, families, and fiscal pressures that student debt directly influences. As borrowers age into life stages where financial stability becomes paramount, their appetite for political solutions — including forgiveness, refinancing, and more manageable repayment structures — is likely to intensify.

Student loan debt also affects communities differently. Black and Latinx borrowers are disproportionately burdened, with Black borrowers often owing more and struggling with repayment longer due to structural inequities in income and wealth. These disparities will continue to grow unless systemic reforms address not just debt levels but the economic systems that compound them over time. Communities of color are projected to constitute a larger share of the eligible electorate by 2030, and when a disproportionate share of voters in a given demographic faces an issue like unsustainable debt, it naturally becomes central to their political priorities and shapes the platforms of candidates seeking their support.

Older Americans are impacted by student loan dynamics not necessarily as borrowers themselves, but as co-signers, parents, or caregivers helping children or grandchildren manage debt. With the U.S. population aging, the 65+ age group is expected to grow as a portion of the electorate, and those over 80 will increasingly drive Medicaid and healthcare costs, adding strain to federal and state budgets. Older voters tend to vote at higher rates than younger voters, and as more families find multigenerational debt obligations weighing on retirement savings, caregiving responsibilities, and healthcare needs, the political urgency around student loan reform may expand beyond traditional “student” demographics and into older voters’ policy concerns.

Geographic and economic shifts also shape the political significance of student debt. States with high education costs, and correspondingly high average debt loads, may see student loan issues become central to local and statewide elections. Migration patterns bringing younger, more diverse populations to new regions — including parts of the South and Midwest — will likely influence electoral alignments and policy debates in competitive districts. Meanwhile, national concerns such as the growing federal debt, ongoing military engagements abroad, and rising costs associated with healthcare for an aging population amplify the stakes, creating competing pressures on policymakers who must balance debt relief against broader fiscal challenges.

Economic inequality further complicates the picture. The concentration of wealth among the richest Americans continues to grow, giving this group greater political influence and shaping policy priorities in ways that often conflict with the needs of student borrowers and middle-class families. As wealth and power accumulate at the top, voters carrying student debt may increasingly perceive systemic unfairness, heightening the political salience of debt relief and broader structural reforms. The interaction of these factors — persistent debt, rising national obligations, ongoing conflict, and economic inequality — suggests that student loans will remain intertwined with larger national debates over fiscal responsibility, social safety nets, and the distribution of economic power.

Student loan debt has already become a wedge issue in national politics, especially within Democratic primaries. The demographic shifts of the late 2020s, rising diversity, coupled economic pressures, and growing awareness of wealth inequality could make it a central concern for a broader slice of the electorate. Policymakers who ignore student debt risk alienating key voter blocs: younger voters whose turnout matters in swing states, communities of color with growing electoral influence, and middle-class families navigating financial strain alongside broader economic and geopolitical uncertainties.

The economic impact of outstanding student loan debt, from delayed homeownership to depressed small business formation, carries demographic implications that feed back into the political sphere. If current trends continue, the cost of inaction will not just be political but economic, affecting national growth rates, tax revenue, social programs, and inequality metrics that in turn shape voter sentiment and policy priorities.

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Student Debt and the Shifting Political Landscape

By 2028 and into the 2030s, demographic change is poised to elevate student loan debt from a pressing public concern to a core political battleground unless policymakers act proactively. With more borrowers entering key voting blocs, disproportionate impacts across racial and economic lines, and economic consequences rippling through communities of all ages, student loan debt is more than a financial issue: it is a demographic reality shaping the future of American politics.

Sadly, the Higher Education Inquirer will not be around to cover these developments as they unfold. HEI has made predictions about student debt and its political consequences in the past, and while nothing is set in stone, the combination of rising demographics, persistent economic inequality, the mounting national debt, ongoing war-related obligations, and pressures from an aging population does not paint a promising picture. Without major policy reforms — such as targeted debt relief, changes to repayment systems, or broader higher education financing reforms — the political salience of student debt is likely to intensify, influencing campaigns, elections, and national discourse for years to come.

---

Sources

Education Data Initiative, “Student Loan Debt Statistics 2025,” educationdata.org
TransUnion, “May 2025 Student Loan Update,” newsroom.transunion.com
Forbes, “Student Loans for 64 Million Borrowers Are Heading Toward a Dangerous Cliff,” forbes.com
College Board, “Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025,” research.collegeboard.org
LendingTree, “Student Loan Debt Statistics by State,” lendingtree.com
NerdWallet, “Student Loan Debt Statistics 2025,” nerdwallet.com

Higher Education Inquirer Resources, Spring 2026

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

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

Ahn, Ilsup (2023). The Ethics of Educational Healthcare: Student Debt, Neoliberalism, and Justice. Palgrave Macmillan.
Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.
Alexander, Bryan (2023). Universities on Fire. Johns Hopkins Press.

Alexander, Bryan (2026). Peak Higher Ed. Johns Hopkins Press.

Angulo, A. (2016). Diploma Mills: How For-profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Apthekar, Bettina (1966). Big Business and the American University. New Outlook Publishers.

Apthekar, Bettina (1969). Higher Education and the Student Rebellion in the United States, 1960–1969: A Bibliography.

Archibald, R. & Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America's Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.

Armstrong, E. & Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.

Arum, R. & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press.

Baldwin, Davarian (2021). In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. Bold Type Books.

Barr, Andrew & Turner, Sarah (2023). The Labor Market Returns to Higher Education. Oxford University Press.

Bennett, W. & Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It? Thomas Nelson.

Berg, I. (1970). The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs. Praeger.

Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University. Princeton University Press.

Berman, Elizabeth Popp & Stevens, Mitchell (eds.) (2019). The University Under Pressure. Emerald Publishing.

Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.

Berry, J. and Worthen, H. (2021). Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement in Higher Education. Pluto Books.

Best, J. & Best, E. (2014). The Student Loan Mess. Atkinson Family Foundation.

Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism. Norton.

Bogue, E. Grady & Aper, Jeffrey (2000). Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education.

Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace. Princeton University Press.

Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works. NYU Press.

Brennan, J. & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press.

Brint, S. & Karabel, J. (1989). The Diverted Dream. Oxford University Press.

Burawoy, Michael & Mitchell, Katharyne (eds.) (2020). The University, Neoliberalism, and the Politics of Inequality. Routledge.

Burd, Stephen (2024). Lifting the Veil on Enrollment Management: How a Powerful Industry is Limiting Social Mobility in American Higher Education. Harvard Education Press

Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus. Rutgers University Press.

Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024). Whiteness in the Ivory Tower. Teachers College Press.

Cantwell, Brendan & Robertson, Susan (eds.) (2021). Research Handbook on the Politics of Higher Education. Edward Elgar.

Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education. Princeton University Press.

Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off? Public Affairs.

Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.

Cassuto, Leonard (2015). The Graduate School Mess. Harvard University Press.

Caterine, Christopher (2020). Leaving Academia. Princeton Press.

Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass. University of Chicago Press.

Chomsky, Noam (2014). Masters of Mankind. Haymarket Books.

Choudaha, Rahul & de Wit, Hans (eds.) (2019). International Student Recruitment and Mobility. Routledge.

Clay, Kevin (2026). I Guess This Is Activism?: Youth, Political Education, and Free-Market Common Sense. University of Minnesota Press.  

Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education. Jossey-Bass.

Collins, Randall (1979/2019). The Credential Society. Columbia University Press.

Cottom, Tressie McMillan (2016). Lower Ed.

Cottom, Tressie McMillan & Darity, William A. Jr. (eds.) (2018). For-Profit Universities. Routledge.

Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? Routledge.

Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors.

Dorn, Charles (2017). For the Common Good. Cornell University Press.

Eaton, Charlie (2022). Bankers in the Ivory Tower. University of Chicago Press.

Eisenmann, Linda (2006). Higher Education for Women in Postwar America. Johns Hopkins Press.

Espenshade, T. & Walton Radford, A. (2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal. Princeton University Press.

Faragher, John Mack & Howe, Florence (eds.) (1988). Women and Higher Education in American History. Norton.

Farber, Jerry (1972). The University of Tomorrowland. Pocket Books.

Freeman, Richard B. (1976). The Overeducated American. Academic Press.

Gaston, P. (2014). Higher Education Accreditation. Stylus.

Gildersleeve, Ryan Evely & Tierney, William (2017). The Contemporary Landscape of Higher Education. Routledge.

Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty. Oxford University Press.

Giroux, Henry (1983). Theory and Resistance in Education. Bergin and Garvey Press.

Giroux, Henry (2014). Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Haymarket Books.

Giroux, Henry (2022). Pedagogy of Resistance. Bloomsbury Academic.

Gleason, Philip (1995). Contending with Modernity. Oxford University Press.

Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission.

Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price.

Graeber, David (2018). Bullshit Jobs. Simon and Schuster.

Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap. Harvard Press.

Hamilton, Laura T. & Kelly Nielson (2021). Broke.

Hampel, Robert L. (2017). Fast and Curious. Rowman & Littlefield.

Hirschman, Daniel & Berman, Elizabeth Popp (eds.) (2021). The Sociology of Higher Education.

Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University.

Kamenetz, Anya (2006). Generation Debt. Riverhead.

Keats, John (1965). The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.

Kelchen, Robert (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Kezar, A., DePaola, T., & Scott, D. (2019). The Gig Academy. Johns Hopkins Press.

Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street.

Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities. Harper Perennial.

Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation. Crown.

Kraus, Neil (2023). The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement. Temple University Press.

Labaree, David (1997). How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. Yale University Press.

Labaree, David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess. University of Chicago Press.

Lafer, Gordon (2004). The Job Training Charade. Cornell University Press.

Loehen, James (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me. The New Press.

Lohse, Andrew (2014). Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy. Thomas Dunne Books.

Lucas, C.J. (1994). American Higher Education: A History.

Lukianoff, Greg & Haidt, Jonathan (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind. Penguin Press.

Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.

Mandery, Evan (2022). Poison Ivy. New Press.

Marginson, Simon (2016). The Dream Is Over. University of California Press.

Marti, Eduardo (2016). America's Broken Promise. Excelsior College Press.

Mettler, Suzanne (2014). Degrees of Inequality. Basic Books.

Morris, Dan & Targ, Harry (2023). From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University.

Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.

Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake.

Newfield, Christopher (2023). Metrics-Driven. Johns Hopkins Press.

O’Neil, Cathy (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction. Crown.

Palfrey, John (2020). Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces. MIT Press.

Paulsen, M. & Smart, J.C. (2001). The Finance of Higher Education. Agathon Press.

Piketty, Thomas (2020). Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press.

Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.

Rojstaczer, Stuart (1999). Gone for Good. Oxford University Press.

Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing.

Roth, G. (2019). The Educated Underclass. Pluto Press.

Ruben, Julie (1996). The Making of the Modern University. University of Chicago Press.

Rudolph, F. (1991). The American College and University.

Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.

Schrecker, Ellen (2010). The Lost Soul of Higher Education: New Press.

Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound.

Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth. Cornell University Press.

Simpson, Christopher (1999). Universities and Empire. New Press.

Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step.

Slaughter, Sheila & Rhoades, Gary (2004). Academic Capitalism and the New Economy. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Smyth, John (2017). The Toxic University. Palgrave Macmillan.

Sperber, Murray (2000). Beer and Circus. Holt.

Stein, Sharon (2022). Unsettling the University. Johns Hopkins Press.

Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class. Harvard University Press.

Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me.

Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. University of Chicago Press.

Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Basic Books.

Taylor, Barret J. & Cantwell, Brendan (2019). Unequal Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.

Thelin, John R. (2019). A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.

Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Trow, Martin (1973). Problems in the Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education. Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. 

Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation. Simon and Schuster.

Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree.

Veysey, Lawrence R. (1965). The Emergence of the American University.

Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.

Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid. Anchor.

Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure. Cypress House.

Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy.

Winks, Robin (1996). Cloak and Gown. Yale University Press.

Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.

Zaloom, Caitlin (2019). Indebted. Princeton University Press.

Zemsky, Robert, Shaman, Susan & Baldridge, Susan Campbell (2020). The College Stress Test. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Zuboff, Shoshana (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs. 

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

• Academe Blog
• Adjunct Crisis
• Adjunct Nation
• American Federation of Teachers Adjunct-Contingent Faculty Caucus
• American Scholar
• Bryan Alexander (Futurist)
• Campus News (New York)
• Clery Center
• Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor
• College Futures Foundation (California, K-20)
• College is a Risky Business (Thomas B. Walsh)
• College Promise (Free Community College)
• College Tuition Advisory Services (CTAS)
• College Viability App (Gary Stocker)
• Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Faculty
• Confessions of a College Professor (Professor Doom)
• Debt Collective
• Deep Thoughts on Higher Education (Jeff Doyle) 
• Diane Ravitch (K-12)
• EdTrust
  
• Higher Ed Not Debt
• Higher Education Labor United  
  
• Higher Education Strategy Associates
• I Am Ai
• ITT Tech Warriors
• Jim Wolfston and the Social Mobility Index (CollegeNet)
  
• Jonathan Kozol (K-12)
• Kelchen on Education
  
• National Consumer Law Center
• New Faculty Majority (Adjuncts)
• New Laws For America (Bob Hertz)
• Outside the Law School Scam
• Presidents Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration 
• Project on Predatory Student Lending
  
• Randall Collins (Credentialism and Credential Inflation)
• Remaking the University
• Republic Report (David Halperin)
• Saving For College (Mark Kantrowtitz)
• SEIU Faculty Forward (Adjuncts)
• Steve Foerster (Technologist and Educator)
• Strike Debt Portland
• Student Borrower Protection Center
• Student Debt Crisis
• Student Loan Justice
• Terri Givens (Radical Empathy)
• The Best Classroom is the Struggle (Joshua Sooter) 
• TuitionFit (Mark Salisbury)
• Whistleblower Revolution (Heidi Weber)
• Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
• Wrench in the Gears: A Skeptical Parent's Thoughts on Digital Curriculum (K-12)

 College Choice and Career Planning Tools

• Modern States (free college credits)
  
• College Promise
• TuitionFit 
• College Viability App
• College Scorecard (NCES) 
• Washington Monthly College Rankings 
• Apprenticeship Finder (US Department of Labor)
• FinAid
• College Navigator (NCES)
• Best Value Colleges (PayScale)  
• Hechinger Report College Fitness Tracker
  
• NBC News Investigation: Certificate schools are leaving many students in debt and unable to find jobs
• 2/3s of US Employees Regret Their College Degrees (CBS News)
• The Future of Work Won't Be About College Degrees (CNBC, Stepane Kasriel)
• Student Loan Meltdown (Dave Ramsey)
• Permanent Underemployment for College Grads (Burning Glass Technologies)
• College Is A Risky Proposition For The Working Class (Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report)
• Apprenticeships are a trending alternative to college — but there’s a hitch (Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report) 
• 15 Things College Doesn't Teach You
• Best Colleges for Social Mobility (CollegeNet)
• The Case Against Higher Education (Bryan Caplan)
• College May Not Pay Off For Everyone (Liberty Street Economics/NY FED)
• Online Education Has Questionable Outcomes (IHE)
• Colleges Where Most Students Borrow and Few Repay (TICAS)
• Broke, Busted, and Disgusted Trailer (Student Loan Debt)
• The Confusing Information Colleges Provide Students About Financial Aid (The Atlantic)
• College Affordability and Transparency Center (ED)
• Public College Dropout Factories (Third Way)
• Outcomes By Major (NY FED)
• Third Way
• GI Bill Comparison Tool (VA)
• 8 Tips to Help Vets Pick the Right College (Military Times)
• Warrior Scholar (For Veterans)
• Service to School (For Veterans)
• Peer Advisors for Veteran Education (PAVE)

Innovation and Reform

• Faculty Focus
  
• Strategies for Improving Student Success (Inside Higher Education)
• CUNY ASAP 
  
• Gap Year Basics (NYU)
• Union Plus Free College 
  
• Maryland Student Loan Debt Relief Tax Credit
• Canceling Student Loan Debt Would Grow Economy and Add Jobs (Levy Institute)
• Beyond Tuition: Promises for Affordability, Quality, and Accountability in Higher Education (Center for American Progress)
• Georgia State Turnaround (CHE)
• Spelman Health Initiative (IHE)
• University of Kansas: BA In Three Years
• Shady Grove: Nine Campuses in One (WAPO)  
  

Higher Education Policy

• Veterans’ Education Advocates Celebrate Closure of the 90/10 Loophole
• College Transparency Act (Senate Bill 800)
• Dropping Gainful Employment Rules Gives Billions to Subprime Colleges (Inside Higher Education)
• ED Announces Steps to Hold Institutions Accountable for Taxpayer Losses
• FTC Head Says Supreme Court Ruling Puts More Than $2 Billion for Cheated Consumers at Risk (Brent Kendall, WSJ)
• GAO Report Regarding Online Program Managers
• How to Stop Sudden College Closures (Century Foundation)
• Improving Outcomes Data for Online Programs (Robert Kelchen, Inside Higher Education)
• Spelman College Replaces NCAA Sports with Wellness Programs
• Strengthening Rural Anchor Institutions: Federal Policy Solutions for Rural Public Colleges and the Communities They Serve (Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges)
• The Distributional Effects of Student Loan Forgiveness (BFI Working Paper, Sylvain Catherine and Constantine Yannelis)
• The for-profit college system is broken and the Biden administration needs to fix it (Brookings)
• The Impact of a National Program of Free Tuition at Public Community Colleges and Free Tuition for Most Students at Public Four-Year Colleges and Universities on College Enrollments, Graduations, and the Economy (Robert Shapiro and Isaac Yoder)
• Three Things Policymakers Can Do to Protect Online Students (Century Foundation)  
  

Data Sources

• American Association of Colleges and Universities  
  
• American Association of State Colleges and Universities
• American Indian Higher Education Consortium
• Academic Labor Force Trends (AAUP)
• Century Foundation 
  
• Closed Schools Report (US Department of Education)
• College Closing Projections (EY)
• College Costs Increasing Over Time (College Board)
• College Debt Inhibits Home Buying (CNBC)
• Complete College America
  
• Debt by Degrees (Pro Publica)
• Department of Defense
• Education Statistics by Institution
• Enrollment Numbers 
• Excelencia in Education
• Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity
  
• Growing Inland Achievement 
• Hechinger Report
• Heightened Cash Monitoring
• Long-term Student Loan Default Rates
• Lumina Foundation 
  
• National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)
• National Assessment of Educational Progress
  
• National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA)
• National Center for Education Statistics
• NCES Blog
  
• National Student Clearinghouse 
• Predicting College Closures and Financial Distress (Philadelphia Federal Reserve)
  
• School Counselor Numbers (ASCA)
• Scientists Leaving Academia in Droves
• Starving the Beast: The Battle to Disrupt and Reform America’s Public Universities
• State by State College Debt (TICAS)
• Student Loan Debt By State (Urban Institute)
• Student Loan Debt Clock
• Student Loan Debt Inhibits Home Buying (CNBC)
• Student Loan Default Projections (Brookings)
• Subprime Colleges (David Halperin)
• The 74: America's Education News Source
  
• Third Way Reports
• Tracking College Closures (Hechinger Report) 
  
• Transfer Credit Problems (GAO)
• United Negro College Fund
  
• University Business Officers Reports
• US Financial Aid (2024 Annual Report) 
  
• Veterans Affairs (GI Bill)

Trade publications

• Chronicle of Higher Education
• Diverse Issues in Higher Education 
• EdSurge
  
• Higher Ed Dive
• Inside Higher Ed

The Poisoning of the American Mind

For more than a decade, Americans have been told that polarization, mistrust, and civic fragmentation are organic byproducts of cultural change. But the scale, speed, and persistence of the damage suggest something more deliberate: a sustained poisoning of the American mind—one that exploits structural weaknesses in education, media, technology, and governance.

This poisoning is not the work of a single actor. It is the cumulative result of foreign influence campaigns, profit-driven global technology platforms, and domestic institutions that have failed to defend democratic literacy. Higher education, once imagined as a firewall against mass manipulation, has proven porous, compromised, and in many cases complicit.

Foreign Influence as Cognitive Warfare

Chinese and Russian influence operations differ in style but converge in purpose: weakening American social cohesion, degrading trust in institutions, and normalizing cynicism.

Russian efforts have focused on chaos. Through state-linked troll farms, bot networks, and disinformation pipelines, Russian actors have amplified racial grievances, cultural resentments, and political extremism on all sides. The objective has not been persuasion so much as exhaustion—flooding the information environment until truth becomes indistinguishable from propaganda and democratic participation feels futile.

Chinese influence efforts, by contrast, have emphasized discipline and control. Through economic leverage, academic partnerships, Confucius Institutes, and pressure campaigns targeting universities and publishers, the Chinese Communist Party has sought to shape what can be discussed, researched, or criticized. While less visibly inflammatory than Russian disinformation, these efforts quietly narrow the boundaries of acceptable discourse—especially within elite institutions that prize funding and global prestige.

Both strategies treat cognition itself as a battlefield. The target is not simply voters, but students, scholars, journalists, and future professionals—anyone involved in shaping narratives or knowledge.

The Role of Global Tech Elites

Foreign influence campaigns would be far less effective without the infrastructure built and defended by global technology elites.

Social media platforms were designed to monetize attention, not to preserve truth. Algorithms reward outrage, tribalism, and repetition. Misinformation is not an accidental byproduct of these systems; it is a predictable outcome of engagement-driven design.

What is often overlooked is how insulated tech leadership has become from the social consequences of its products. Executives who speak fluently about “free expression” and “innovation” operate within gated communities, private schools, and curated information environments. The cognitive pollution affecting the public rarely touches them directly.

At the same time, these platforms have shown inconsistent willingness to confront state-sponsored manipulation. Decisions about content moderation, data access, and platform governance are routinely shaped by geopolitical calculations and market access—particularly when China is involved. The result is a global information ecosystem optimized for profit, vulnerable to manipulation, and hostile to slow, evidence-based thinking.

Higher Education’s Failure of Defense

Universities were supposed to be inoculation centers against mass manipulation. Instead, they have become transmission vectors.

Decades of underfunding public higher education, adjunctification of faculty labor, and administrative bloat have weakened academic independence. Meanwhile, elite institutions increasingly depend on foreign students, donors, and partnerships, creating subtle but powerful incentives to avoid controversy.

Critical thinking is often reduced to branding rather than practice. Students are encouraged to adopt identities and positions rather than interrogate evidence. Media literacy programs, where they exist at all, are thin, optional, and disconnected from the realities of algorithmic persuasion.

Even worse, student debt has turned higher education into a high-stakes compliance system. Indebted graduates are less likely to challenge employers, institutions, or dominant narratives. Economic precarity becomes cognitive precarity.

A Domestic Willingness to Be Deceived

Foreign adversaries and tech elites exploit vulnerabilities, but they did not create them alone. The poisoning of the American mind has been enabled by domestic actors who benefit from confusion, resentment, and distraction.

Political consultants, partisan media ecosystems, and privatized education interests profit from outrage and ignorance. Complex structural problems—healthcare, housing, inequality, climate—are reframed as cultural battles, keeping attention away from systems of power and extraction.

In this environment, truth becomes negotiable, expertise becomes suspect, and education becomes a consumer product rather than a public good.

The Long-Term Consequences

The danger is not simply misinformation. It is the erosion of shared reality.

A society that cannot agree on basic facts cannot govern itself. A population trained to react rather than reflect is easy to manipulate—by foreign states, domestic demagogues, or algorithmic systems optimized for profit.

Higher education sits at the center of this crisis. If universities cannot reclaim their role as defenders of intellectual rigor and civic responsibility, they risk becoming credential factories feeding a cognitively compromised workforce.

Toward Intellectual Self-Defense

Reversing the poisoning of the American mind will require more than fact-checking or content moderation. It demands structural change:

A recommitment to public higher education as a democratic institution, not a revenue stream.
Robust media literacy embedded across curricula, not siloed in electives.
Transparency and accountability for technology platforms that shape public cognition.
Protection of academic freedom from both foreign pressure and domestic political interference.
Relief from student debt as a prerequisite for intellectual independence.

Cognitive sovereignty is national security. Without it, no amount of military or economic power can sustain a democratic society.

The question is not whether the American mind has been poisoned. The question is whether the institutions charged with educating it are willing to admit their failure—and do the hard work of recovery.

---

Sources

U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, reports on Russian active measures
National Intelligence Council, foreign influence assessments
Department of Justice investigations into Confucius Institutes
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Renée DiResta et al., research on computational propaganda
Higher Education Inquirer reporting on student debt, academic labor, and institutional capture

Artificial Intelligence, Mass Surveillance, and the Quiet Reengineering of Higher Education

The Higher Education Inquirer has approached artificial intelligence not as a speculative future but as a present reality already reshaping higher education. Long before university leaders and consultants embraced Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an abstract promise, HEI was using these tools directly while documenting how they were being embedded into academic institutions. What has become increasingly clear is that AI is not merely an educational technology. It is a structural force accelerating corporatization, automation, and mass surveillance within higher education.

Artificial intelligence enters the university through the language of efficiency and personalization. Administrators speak of innovation, student success, and institutional competitiveness. Yet beneath this language lies a deeper transformation. Teaching, advising, grading, counseling, and evaluation are increasingly reduced to measurable functions rather than human relationships. Once learning is fragmented into functions, it becomes easily automated, monitored, outsourced, and scaled.

This shift has long been visible in for-profit and online institutions, where scripted instruction, learning management systems, predictive analytics, and automated advising have replaced meaningful faculty engagement. What is new is that nonprofit and elite universities are now adopting similar systems, enhanced by powerful AI tools and vast data collection infrastructures. The result is the emergence of the robocollege, an institution optimized for credential production, labor reduction, and data extraction rather than intellectual growth.

Students are told that AI-driven education will prepare them for the future economy. In reality, many are being trained for an economy defined by automation, precarity, and diminished human agency. Rather than empowering students to challenge technological power, institutions increasingly socialize them to adapt to it. Compliance, constant assessment, and algorithmic feedback replace intellectual risk-taking and critical inquiry.

These developments reinforce and intensify inequality. Working-class students, student loan debtors, and marginalized populations are disproportionately enrolled in institutions where AI-mediated education and automated oversight are most aggressively deployed. Meanwhile, elite students continue to receive human mentorship, small seminars, and insulation from constant monitoring. Artificial intelligence thus deepens a two-tier system of higher education, one human and one surveilled.

Mass surveillance is no longer peripheral to higher education. It is central to how AI operates on campus. Predictive analytics flag students as “at risk” before they fail, often without transparency or consent. Proctoring software monitors faces, eye movements, living spaces, and biometric data. Engagement dashboards track clicks, keystrokes, time spent on screens, and behavioral patterns. These systems claim to support learning while normalizing constant observation.

Students are increasingly treated as data subjects rather than citizens in a learning community. Faculty are pressured to comply with opaque systems they did not design and cannot audit. The data harvested through these platforms flows upward to administrators, vendors, private equity-backed education companies, and, in some cases, government and security-linked entities. Higher education becomes a testing ground for surveillance technologies later deployed across workplaces and society at large.

At the top of the academic hierarchy, a small group of elite universities dominates global AI research. These institutions maintain close relationships with Big Tech firms, defense contractors, and venture capital interests. They shape not only innovation but ideology, presenting AI development as inevitable and benevolent while supplying talent and legitimacy to systems of automation, surveillance, and control. Ethics initiatives and AI principles proliferate even as accountability remains elusive.

Cultural warnings about technological obsolescence no longer feel theoretical. Faculty are told to adapt or be replaced by automated systems. Students are told to compete with algorithms while being monitored by them. Administrators frame automation and surveillance as unavoidable. What is absent from these conversations is moral courage. Higher education rarely asks whether it should participate in building systems that render human judgment, privacy, and dignity increasingly expendable.

Artificial intelligence does not have to dehumanize higher education, but resisting that outcome requires choices institutions have largely avoided. It requires valuing human labor over scalability, privacy over control, and education as a public good rather than a data pipeline. It requires democratic governance instead of technocratic management and surveillance by default.

For years, the Higher Education Inquirer has examined artificial intelligence not as a neutral tool or a distant threat, but as a technology shaped by power, profit, and institutional priorities. The future of higher education is not being determined by machines alone. It is being determined by decisions made by university leaders, technology firms, and policymakers who choose surveillance and efficiency over humanity.

The question is no longer whether AI will reshape higher education.
The question is whether higher education will resist becoming a fully surveilled system that trains students to accept a monitored, automated, and diminished future.

---

Sources

Higher Education Inquirer, Robocolleges, Artificial Intelligence, and the Dehumanization of Higher Education

Higher Education Inquirer, AI-Robot Capitalists Will Destroy the Human Economy (Randall Collins)

Higher Education Inquirer, University of Phoenix: Training Folks for Robowork

Higher Education Inquirer, “The Obsolete Man”: A Twilight Zone Warning for the Trump Era and the Age of AI

Higher Education Inquirer, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT Among Top U.S. Universities Driving Global AI Research (Studocu)

Higher Education Inquirer, Tech Titans, Ideologues, and the Future of American Higher Education — 2026 Update

College Meltdown 2026 (Glen McGhee)

As the United States moves deeper into the 2020s, the College Meltdown is no longer a speculative concept but a structural reality. The crisis touches nearly every part of the system: enrollment, finances, labor, governance, and the perceived value of a college degree itself. The forces fueling this meltdown are not sudden shocks but accumulated pressures — demographic contraction, policy failures, privatization schemes, student debt burdens, and decades of mission drift — that now converge in 2026 with unprecedented intensity.

The Waning of College Mania

For decades, higher education sold an uncomplicated dream: go to college, get ahead, and move securely into the middle class. This college mania was promoted by policymakers, corporate interests, university marketers, and a compliant media ecosystem. But the spell is breaking. Students at elite universities are skipping classes, disillusioned not only by campus turmoil but by the reality that a degree, even from a prestigious institution, no longer guarantees a stable future. Employers increasingly question the value of credentials that have become inflated, inconsistent, and disconnected from workplace needs.

Yet paradoxically, many jobs still require degrees — not because the work demands them, but because credentialing has become a screening mechanism. The U.S. has built a system in which people must spend tens of thousands of dollars for access to a job that may not even require the knowledge their degree supposedly certifies. This contradiction lies at the heart of the meltdown.

Moody’s Confirms the Meltdown: A Negative Outlook for 2026

The financial rot is now too deep to ignore. Moody’s Investors Service recently issued a negative outlook for all of U.S. higher education for FY2026, confirming what researchers, debtors, and frontline faculty have been warning for years. Demographic decline continues to shrink the pool of traditional college-age students, leaving hundreds of institutions with no plausible path to enrollment stability.

Moody’s expects expenses to grow 4.4% in 2026, while revenues will grow only 3.5% — and for small tuition-dependent institutions, revenue growth may fall to 2.5–2.7%. In other words, the business model simply no longer works. Institutions are already turning to hiring freezes, early retirements, shared services, layoffs, and mergers. These austerity strategies hit labor and students hardest while preserving administrative bloat at the top, mirroring broader patterns of inequality across the U.S. economy.

Compounding the problem, federal loan reforms — particularly the elimination or capping of Grad PLUS loans — threaten universities that rely on overpriced master’s programs as revenue engines. Many of these programs were built during the boom years as financial lifelines, not academic commitments. The bottom is falling out of that model too.

[Image: HEI's baseline model shows steady losses between 2026 and 2036. And it could get much worse].  

White-Collar Unemployment and the Broken Value Proposition

A new generation is confronting economic realities that undermine the old promise of higher education. Recent data show that college graduates now make up roughly 25% of all unemployed Americans, a startling indicator of white-collar contraction. The unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree holders rose to 2.8%, up half a point in a year.

If higher education was once treated as an automatic economic escalator, it is now a much riskier gamble — often with a lifetime of debt attached.

Demographic Collapse and Institutional Failures

The so-called “demographic cliff” is no longer a future event; colleges in the Midwest, Northeast, and South are already competing for shrinking numbers of high-school graduates. Some institutions have resorted to predatory recruitment, deceptive marketing, and desperate discounting — the same tactics that fueled the for-profit college boom and collapse.

Meanwhile, the FAFSA disaster, mismanagement at the Department of Education, and the chaos surrounding federal financial aid verification have caused enrollment delays and intensified uncertainty. Institutions like Phoenix Education Partners (PXED) are already trying to shift blame for their own recruitment failures and history of fraud onto the federal government, signaling a new round of accountability evasion reminiscent of the Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech eras.

Student Debt, Inequality, and Loss of Legitimacy

Student debt remains above $1.7 trillion, reshaping the life trajectories of millions and reinforcing racial and class disparities. Black borrowers, first-generation students, and low-income communities bear the heaviest burdens. Many institutions — especially elite medical centers and flagship universities — are simultaneously cash-rich and inequality-producing, perpetuating the dual structure of American higher education: privilege for the few, precarity for the many.

Faculty and staff face their own meltdown. Contingent labor now constitutes the majority of the instructional workforce, while administrators grow more numerous and more insulated from accountability. Shared governance is weakened, academic freedom is eroding, and political interference is rising, particularly in states targeting DEI programs, history curricula, and dissent.

The Road Ahead: Contraction, Consolidation, and Possibility

The College Meltdown will continue in 2026. More closures are coming, especially among small private colleges and underfunded regional publics. Mergers will be framed as “strategic realignments,” but for many communities — especially rural and historically marginalized ones — they will represent the loss of an anchor institution.

Yet contraction also opens space for reimagining. The United States could choose to rebuild higher education around equity, public purpose, and social good, rather than market metrics and debt financing. That would require:

• substantial public reinvestment,

• free or low-cost pathways for essential programs,

• accountability for predatory institutions,

• democratized governance, and

• a commitment to racial and economic justice.

Whether the nation takes this opportunity remains unclear. What is certain is that the system built on college mania, easy credit, and limitless expansion is collapsing — and Moody’s latest warning simply confirms what students, workers, and communities have felt for years.

The College Meltdown is here. And it’s reshaping the future of higher education in America.

Higher Education Without Illusions

In 2025, the landscape of higher education is dominated by contradictions, crises, and the relentless churn of what might be called “collegemania.” Underneath the polished veneer of university marketing—the glossy brochures, viral TikToks, and celebrity endorsements—lurks a network of systemic pressures that students, faculty, and society at large must navigate. The hashtags trending below the masthead of Higher Education Without Illusions capture the full spectrum of these pressures: #accountability, #adjunct, #AI, #AImeltdown, #algo, #alienation, #anomie, #anxiety, #austerity, #BDR, #bot, #boycott, #BRICS, #climate, #collegemania, #collegemeltdown, #crypto, #divest, #doomloop, #edugrift, #enshittification, #FAFSA, #greed, #incel, #jobless, #kleptocracy, #medugrift, #moralcapital, #nokings, #nonviolence, #PSLF, #QOL, #rehumanization, #resistance, #robocollege, #robostudent, #roboworker, #solidarity, #strikedebt, #surveillance, #temperance, #TPUSA, #transparency, #Trump, #veritas.

Taken together, these words map the terrain of higher education as it exists today: a fragile ecosystem strained by debt, automation, political polarization, and climate urgency. Students are increasingly treated as commodities (#robostudent, #strikedebt), faculty are underpaid and precarious (#adjunct, #medugrift), and universities themselves are subjected to the whims of markets and algorithms (#algo, #AImeltdown, #robocollege).

Financial pressures are unrelenting. The FAFSA system, once intended as a bridge to opportunity, now functions as a tool of surveillance and debt management (#FAFSA, #BDR). Public service loan forgiveness (#PSLF) continues to be delayed or denied, leaving graduates to navigate the twin anxieties of indebtedness and joblessness (#jobless, #doomloop). Meanwhile, austerity measures squeeze institutional budgets, often at the expense of research, mental health support, and academic freedom (#austerity, #anomie, #anxiety).

Automation and artificial intelligence are now central to the higher education ecosystem. AI grading tools, predictive enrollment algorithms, and administrative bots promise efficiency but often produce alienation and ethical dilemmas (#AI, #AImeltdown, #roboworker, #bot). In this context, “robocollege” is not a metaphor but a lived reality for many students navigating hyper-digitized classrooms where human mentorship is increasingly rare.

Political and cultural currents further complicate the picture. From the influence of conservative campus organizations (#TPUSA, #Trump) to global shifts in power (#BRICS), universities are battlegrounds for ideological and material stakes. Moral capital—the credibility and legitimacy of an institution—is increasingly intertwined with corporate sponsorships, divestment movements, and climate commitments (#moralcapital, #divest, #climate). At the same time, greed and kleptocracy (#greed, #kleptocracy) permeate administration and policy decisions, eroding trust in higher education’s social mission.

Yet amid this bleakness, there are threads of resistance and rehumanization. Student debt strikes, faculty solidarity networks, and advocacy for transparency (#strikedebt, #solidarity, #transparency, #rehumanization) reveal a persistent desire to reclaim the university as a space of collective flourishing rather than pure financial extraction. Nonviolence (#nonviolence), temperance (#temperance), and boycotts (#boycott) reflect strategic, principled responses to systemic crises, even as anxiety and alienation persist.

Ultimately, higher education without illusions demands that we confront both the structural and human dimensions of its crises. Universities are not just engines of credentialing and profit—they are social institutions embedded in broader networks of power, ideology, and technology. A recognition of #veritas and #QOL (quality of life) alongside the demands of #collegemania and #enshittification is essential for any hope of reform.

The hashtags are more than social media markers—they are diagnostics. They chart a system in flux, exposing the frictions between automation and humanity, austerity and access, greed and moral responsibility. They call on all of us—students, educators, policymakers, and citizens—to act with accountability, solidarity, and courage.

Higher education without illusions is not pessimism; it is clarity. Only by naming the pressures and contradictions can we begin to imagine institutions that serve human flourishing rather than perpetuate cycles of debt, alienation, and social inequality.

Sources & Further Reading:

• An American Sickness, Elisabeth Rosenthal

• Medical Apartheid, Harriet Washington

• Body and Soul, Alondra Nelson

• HEI coverage of student debt, adjunct labor, and AI in higher education