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Sunday, January 4, 2026

Higher Education Inquirer Resources, Spring 2026

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

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











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

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

 College Choice and Career Planning Tools

Innovation and Reform

Higher Education Policy

Data Sources

Trade publications
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Monday, August 25, 2025

HEI Resources Fall 2025

 [Editor's Note: Please let us know of any additions or corrections.]

Books

  • Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.  
  • Alexander, Bryan (2023).  Universities on Fire. 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. and Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America's Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.
  • Armstrong, E. and Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.
  • Arum, R. and 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.  
  • Bennett, W. and Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education. Thomas Nelson.
  • Berg, I. (1970). "The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs." Praeger.
  • Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University.  Princeton University Press. 
  • Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.
  • Best, J. and Best, E. (2014) The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. Atkinson Family Foundation.
    • Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. Norton.
  • Bogue, E. Grady and Aper, Jeffrey.  (2000). Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education: The Evolution of Philosophy and Policy. 
  • Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace : The Commercialization of Higher Education.  Princeton University Press. 
  • Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation. NYU Press.
  • Brennan, J & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press. 
  • Brint, S., & Karabel, J. The Diverted Dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900–1985. Oxford University Press. (1989).
  • Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024) Whiteness in the Ivory Tower: Why Don't We Notice the White Students Sitting Together in the Quad? Teachers College Press.
  • Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus: Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of "Post-Racial" Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.
  • Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Princeton University Press.
  • Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off?: A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You'll Ever Make. Public Affairs.
  • Cassuto, Leonard (2015). The Graduate School Mess. Harvard University Press. 
  • Caterine, Christopher (2020). Leaving Academia. Princeton Press. 
  • Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.
  • Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass: How America's Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission University of Chicago Press.
  • Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  • Collins, Randall. (1979/2019) The Credential Society. Academic Press. Columbia University Press. 
  • Cottom, T. (2016). Lower Ed: How For-profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America
  • Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? 8th Edition. Routledge.
  • Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.
  • Dorn, Charles. (2017) For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America Cornell University Press.
  • Eaton, Charlie.  (2022) Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education. University of Chicago Press.
  • Eisenmann, Linda. (2006) Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
  • Espenshade, T., Walton Radford, A.(2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life. Princeton University Press.
  • Faragher, John Mack and Howe, Florence, ed. (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.
  • Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why It Matters
  • Giroux, Henry (1983).  Theory and Resistance in Education. Bergin and Garvey Press
    • Giroux, Henry (2022). Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance. Bloomsbury Academic
  • Gleason, Philip (1995). Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. Oxford U.
  • Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.
  • Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream.
  • Graeber, David (2018) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon and Schuster. 
    • Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston. Harvard Press.
  • Hamilton, Laura T. and Kelly Nielson (2021) Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities
    • Hampel, Robert L. (2017). Fast and Curious: A History of Shortcuts in American Education. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement
  • Keats, John (1965) The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.
  • Kelchen, Robert. (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Kezar, A., DePaola, T, and Scott, D. The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. Johns Hopkins Press. 
  • Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street: The Transformation of For-profit Higher Education
  • Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Crown. 
  • Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. Harper Perennial.
  • Labaree, David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Labaree, David (1997) How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education, Yale University 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: A Memoir.  Thomas Dunne Books. 
  • Lucas, C.J. American higher education: A history. (1994).
  • Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Penguin Press.
  • Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.
  • Mandery, Evan (2022) . Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us. New Press. 
  • Marti, Eduardo (2016). America's Broken Promise: Bridging the Community College Achievement Gap. Excelsior College Press. 
  • Mettler, Suzanne 'Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. Basic Books. (2014)
    • Morris, Dan and Harry Targ (2023). From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University: Essays in the Transformation of Higher Education. 
  • Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.
  • Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them.
  • Paulsen, M. and J.C. Smart (2001). The Finance of Higher Education: Theory, Research, Policy & Practice.  Agathon Press. 
  • Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing. 
  • Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.
  • Roth, G. (2019) The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility. Pluto Press
  • Ruben, Julie. The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality. University Of Chicago Press. (1996).
  • Rudolph, F. (1991) The American College and University: A History.
  • Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.
  • Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students.
  • Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy. Cornell University Press. 
  • Simpson, Christopher (1999). Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War. New Press.
  • Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education.
  • Stein, Sharon (2022). Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education, Johns Hopkins Press. 
  • Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Harvard University Press. 
  • Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture. 
  • Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. The University of Chicago Press. 
  • Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. Basic Books
  • Taylor, Barret J. and Brendan Cantwell (2019). Unequal Higher Education: Wealth, Status and Student Opportunity. Rutgers University Press.
  • Thelin, John R. (2019) A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
  • Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy: Unionizing Adjunct Faculty in America. Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld. Simon and Schuster.
  • Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much.
  • Veysey Lawrence R. (1965).The emergence of the American university.
  • Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education
  • Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor. 
  • Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure: For-Profit Colleges and the Closing of the Conservative Mind. Cypress House.
  • Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities. 
  • Winks, Robin (1996). Cloak and Gown:Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961. Yale University Press.
  • Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.  
  • Zaloom, Caitlin (2019).  Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost. Princeton University Press. 
  • Zemsky, Robert, Susan Shaman, and Susan Campbell Baldridge (2020). The College Stress Test:Tracking Institutional Futures across a Crowded Market. Johns Hopkins University Press. 

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

 College Choice and Career Planning Tools

Innovation and Reform

Higher Education Policy

Data Sources

Trade publications
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Friday, August 1, 2025

Higher Education Inquirer Surpasses 1 Million Views, Including More Than 200,000 in July 2025

The Higher Education Inquirer has reached a major milestone: more than 1 million total views since its founding, with over 200,000 views in July 2025 alone—a record-breaking month for the independent investigative site. This surge in readership reflects growing public concern with the state of U.S. higher education, especially at a time of increasing economic precarity, political unrest, and institutional dysfunction.

As corporate media outlets continue to downsize or ignore coverage of student debt, credential inflation, predatory schools, and the exploitation of academic labor, readers are seeking more critical, independent voices. HEI, which has long focused on underreported stories within the higher education-industrial complex, is becoming a go-to resource for policymakers, whistleblowers, journalists, and everyday people trying to make sense of the education economy.

Most Viewed Stories in July 2025

A few standout articles reveal key themes that are resonating with readers:

1. "Camp Mystic: A Century of Privilege, Exclusion, and Resilience Along the Guadalupe"
Views: 8,730
This deeply researched piece on the elite girls’ camp in Texas struck a nerve with readers interested in the intersection of inherited wealth, segregation, and performative philanthropy. Camp Mystic serves as a metaphor for the parallel institutions that shape American leadership in quiet, exclusive ways—far from public scrutiny.

Trend: Growing interest in how generational wealth and private networks perpetuate elite power and influence, especially through educational institutions.

2. "The Big Beautiful Bill”: A Catastrophic Blow to College Affordability
Views: 1,290
This analysis of new legislation affecting federal student aid programs explores how a bill dressed in populist language has real consequences for working-class and middle-income families. Readers responded to its dissection of policy doublespeak and the structural defunding of public education.

Trend: Rising awareness of how both major political parties contribute to the erosion of affordable education—often under misleading rhetoric.

3. "Santa Ono: Take the Money and Run"
Views: 956
A pointed critique of University of Michigan President Santa Ono’s high salary and revolving-door administrative career drew in readers frustrated by bloated leadership pay and lack of institutional accountability.

Trend: Increased public scrutiny of university presidents and boards of trustees, especially at elite institutions.

4. "List of Schools with Strong Indicators of Misconduct, Evidence for Borrower Defense Claims"
Views: 943
This database-style article provided a valuable resource for former students, journalists, and attorneys. By documenting schools with troubling records, it supported those filing Borrower Defense to Repayment claims and highlighted the ongoing fallout from the for-profit college boom.

Trend: Continued demand for actionable consumer information amid the Biden Administration’s limited and politically fraught debt relief efforts.

5. "Degrees of Discontent: Credentialism, Inflation, and the Global Education Crisis"
Views: 900
This global take on the failures of credential-driven economies resonated with a wide audience—from jobseekers with degrees they can’t use to educators struggling to make sense of shifting academic value.

Trend: A philosophical and economic reckoning with credentialism, especially as degrees lose value while tuition and debt skyrocket.

6. "Layoffs at Southern New Hampshire University"
Views: 826
Coverage of SNHU, a major player in online education, shed light on the darker side of "innovation": layoffs, overwork, and instability for faculty and staff.

Trend: Growing doubts about the long-term sustainability and labor ethics of the online education model.

7. "Universities Brace for Endowment Tax Hike, Rethink Investment Strategies"
Views: 687
A timely piece on elite university endowments caught the eye of readers interested in how wealth hoarding and financial engineering are baked into modern academia.

Trend: Rising critiques of nonprofit tax loopholes and the financialization of higher ed.

8. "Liberty University in Black and White"
Views: 684
This critical examination of Liberty University’s public image, internal contradictions, and links to right-wing political power explored how Christian nationalist ideology operates through higher education.

Trend: High interest in the political roles of conservative religious institutions and their ties to the culture wars.

9. "Corruption, Fraud and Scandal at Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD Whistleblower)"
Views: 615
A whistleblower-centered article on LACCD corruption revealed widespread misuse of funds and institutional cover-ups, especially in facilities projects.

Trend: Rising demand for investigative journalism focused on local corruption in publicly funded institutions.

10. "Agency Information Collection Activities…Borrower Defense to Loan Repayment Universal Forms"
Views: Not Yet Indexed
While bureaucratic in title, this article was shared among policy experts and debt activists for its breakdown of how regulations—and public comment periods—impact real people trying to discharge fraudulent debt.

Trend: Readers are becoming more engaged in regulatory policy and more skeptical of federal agencies' ability or willingness to protect consumers.

What Readers Want 

What these stories show is a distinct pattern: readers want more accountability, more transparency, and less propaganda from the education system that has long promised prosperity and delivered precarity. They’re fed up with bloated administrative salaries, empty credentials, elite hypocrisy, and legislative betrayal.

Thanks to grassroots support and collaborations with students, whistleblowers, and journalists, the Higher Education Inquirer continues to grow in both reach and relevance.

As we pass 1 million views, we’re not just marking clicks—we’re tracking the pulse of a system in crisis. And we’re not done yet.

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Friday, July 18, 2025

Cognitive Dissonance in Conservative Circles: Student Loans, Reproductive Control, and Elite Education

In the fractured landscape of American politics, few ideological camps require as much mental compartmentalization as the contemporary conservative movement—particularly on issues such as student loan forgiveness, reproductive control, and elite education. These contradictions are not incidental; they are foundational to a worldview that champions “freedom” and “responsibility” while selectively applying both.

Student Loan Forgiveness: Moral Hazard for the Working Class?

Conservatives have long framed student loan forgiveness as a dangerous “bailout” for the irresponsible. When the Biden administration announced broad relief for borrowers in 2022, Republican leaders rushed to block the effort, culminating in the Supreme Court’s rejection of the plan in Biden v. Nebraska (2023) [1]. Senator Mitch McConnell called the proposal “socialism,” and GOP-aligned media accused the administration of rewarding “woke” degrees in gender studies and art history.

Yet this outrage over debt relief was largely absent when it came to Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness. According to data from ProPublica and the U.S. Small Business Administration, many Republican members of Congress, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Vern Buchanan, had hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions—of dollars in business loans forgiven under the program [2]. Donald Trump’s companies received over $2 million in PPP loans, much of it forgiven [3].

Meanwhile, millions of working- and middle-class borrowers remain trapped in debt from degrees that were oversold as gateways to stable careers. Many were students at for-profit institutions that have since faced lawsuits or federal scrutiny for misleading advertising and inflated job placement claims [4].

Reproductive Control: The Politics of "Limited" Government

One of the most glaring contradictions in conservative rhetoric is the demand for limited government—except when it comes to controlling women’s bodies. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), Republican-led states have rushed to enact abortion bans. As of mid-2025, 14 states have near-total bans in effect, many with no exceptions for rape or incest [5].

While conservatives argue for “parental rights” in education and protest vaccine mandates as government overreach, they have no issue allowing the state to force pregnancy and childbirth. The very people championing “freedom” from mask mandates and climate regulations are often the first to demand criminal penalties for doctors who perform abortions.

This isn’t just hypocrisy—it reflects a selective application of liberty: economic freedom for corporations, religious freedom for evangelicals, but no bodily autonomy for pregnant women, particularly those who are poor or marginalized.

Elite Education: The Ivy League as Both Enemy and Badge of Honor

Conservative disdain for elite universities is both cultural and performative. Schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford are routinely criticized as leftist indoctrination centers. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for instance, has targeted public university diversity programs and pushed for “anti-woke” education reforms [6].

And yet, the conservative establishment is deeply enmeshed in elite education. Four of the six conservative Supreme Court justices were educated at Harvard or Yale. The Federalist Society, a conservative legal powerhouse, thrives at these institutions. DeSantis himself holds degrees from Yale and Harvard Law.

Wealthy conservative families still pull strings to get their children into Ivy League schools, often through donations or legacy admissions. Meanwhile, conservative media outlets mock first-generation students or those from historically marginalized communities for seeking higher education in the first place. As working-class and rural conservatives are dissuaded from attending college, elite education becomes more exclusive—while still being used to confer legitimacy on conservative power brokers.

The Real Ideological Glue

These contradictions require cognitive dissonance, but they are sustained by a shared grievance narrative: that “real Americans” are being left behind by coastal elites, cultural change, and demographic shifts. In this framework, debt relief for a truck driver is socialism, but forgiveness for a car dealership owner is economic stimulus. Academic freedom is sacred for religious conservatives, but dangerous when exercised by liberal professors. Government intrusion is tyranny—unless it enforces traditional gender roles.

What binds these inconsistencies together is not logic but power. The goal is not to apply principles consistently, but to protect a hierarchy in which wealth, whiteness, patriarchy, and Christian nationalism remain dominant.

Until conservatives confront these contradictions—or acknowledge that their ideology serves different masters depending on context—they will continue to promote a politics of resentment that undermines both higher education and democracy itself.

Sources:

  1. Supreme Court of the United States. Biden v. Nebraska, 600 U.S. ___ (2023). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_n6io.pdf

  2. ProPublica. “Tracking PPP Loans.” https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/

  3. Forbes. “Trump Organization and PPP Loans: Over $2 Million Forgiven.” July 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2021/07/06/trump-organizations-ppp-loans-over-2-million-forgiven

  4. U.S. Department of Education. “Borrower Defense to Repayment.” https://studentaid.gov/borrower-defense/

  5. Guttmacher Institute. “State Bans on Abortion Throughout Pregnancy.” Updated May 2025. https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-policies-later-abortions

  6. The Chronicle of Higher Education. “DeSantis Signs Bills Overhauling Florida Higher Ed.” May 2023. https://www.chronicle.com/article/desantis-signs-bills-overhauling-florida-higher-ed

The Higher Education Inquirer will continue to investigate the ideological contradictions, systemic inequities, and political influence that define U.S. higher education—and its role in American life.

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Monday, January 6, 2025

HEI Resources 2025

[Editor's Note: Please let us know of any additions or corrections.]

Books

  • Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.  
  • Alexander, Bryan (2023).  Universities on Fire. 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. and Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America's Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.
  • Armstrong, E. and Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.
  • Arum, R. and 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.  
  • Bennett, W. and Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education. Thomas Nelson.
  • Berg, I. (1970). "The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs." Praeger.
  • Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University.  Princeton University Press. 
  • Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.
  • Best, J. and Best, E. (2014) The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. Atkinson Family Foundation.
    • Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. Norton.
  • Bogue, E. Grady and Aper, Jeffrey.  (2000). Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education: The Evolution of Philosophy and Policy. 
  • Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace : The Commercialization of Higher Education.  Princeton University Press. 
  • Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation. NYU Press.
  • Brennan, J & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press. 
  • Brint, S., & Karabel, J. The Diverted Dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900–1985. Oxford University Press. (1989).
  • Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024) Whiteness in the Ivory Tower: Why Don't We Notice the White Students Sitting Together in the Quad? Teachers College Press.
  • Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus: Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of "Post-Racial" Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.
  • Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Princeton University Press.
  • Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off?: A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You'll Ever Make. Public Affairs.
  • Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.
  • Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass: How America's Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission University of Chicago Press.
  • Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  • Collins, Randall. (1979/2019) The Credential Society. Academic Press. Columbia University Press. 
  • Cottom, T. (2016). Lower Ed: How For-profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America
  • Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? 8th Edition. Routledge.
  • Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.
  • Dorn, Charles. (2017) For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America Cornell University Press.
  • Eaton, Charlie.  (2022) Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education. University of Chicago Press.
  • Eisenmann, Linda. (2006) Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
  • Espenshade, T., Walton Radford, A.(2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life. Princeton University Press.
  • Faragher, John Mack and Howe, Florence, ed. (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.
  • Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why It Matters
  • Gleason, Philip. Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. Oxford U. Press, 1995.
  • Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.
  • Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream.
  • Graeber, David (2018) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon and Schuster. 
    • Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston. Harvard Press.
  • Hamilton, Laura T. and Kelly Nielson (2021) Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities
    • Hampel, Robert L. (2017). Fast and Curious: A History of Shortcuts in American Education. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement
  • Keats, John (1965) The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.
  • Kelchen, R. (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Kezar, A., DePaola, T, and Scott, D. The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. Johns Hopkins Press. 
  • Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street: The Transformation of For-profit Higher Education
  • Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Crown. 
  • Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. Harper Perennial.
  • Labaree, David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Labaree, David (1997) How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education, Yale University 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: A Memoir.  Thomas Dunne Books. 
  • Lucas, C.J. American higher education: A history. (1994).
  • Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Penguin Press.
  • Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.
  • Mandery, Evan (2022) . Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us. New Press. 
  • Marti, Eduardo (2016). America's Broken Promise: Bridging the Community College Achievement Gap. Excelsior College Press. 
  • Mettler, Suzanne 'Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. Basic Books. (2014)
  • Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.
  • Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them.
  • Paulsen, M. and J.C. Smart (2001). The Finance of Higher Education: Theory, Research, Policy & Practice.  Agathon Press. 
  • Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing. 
  • Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.
  • Roth, G. (2019) The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility. Pluto Press
  • Ruben, Julie. The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality. University Of Chicago Press. (1996).
  • Rudolph, F. (1991) The American College and University: A History.
  • Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.
  • Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students.
  • Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy. Cornell University Press. 
  • Simpson, Christopher (1999). Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War. New Press.
  • Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education.
  • Stein, Sharon (2022). Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education, Johns Hopkins Press. 
  • Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Harvard University Press. 
  • Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture. 
  • Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. The University of Chicago Press. 
  • Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. Basic Books
  • Taylor, Barret J. and Brendan Cantwell (2019). Unequal Higher Education: Wealth, Status and Student Opportunity. Rutgers University Press.
  • Thelin, John R. (2019) A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
  • Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy: Unionizing Adjunct Faculty in America. Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld. Simon and Schuster.
  • Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much.
  • Veysey Lawrence R. (1965).The emergence of the American university.
  • Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education
  • Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor. 
  • Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure: For-Profit Colleges and the Closing of the Conservative Mind. Cypress House.
  • Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities. 
  • Winks, Robin (1996). Cloak and Gown:Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961. Yale University Press.
  • Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.  
  • Zaloom, Caitlin (2019).  Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost. Princeton University Press. 
  • Zemsky, Robert, Susan Shaman, and Susan Campbell Baldridge (2020). The College Stress Test:Tracking Institutional Futures across a Crowded Market. Johns Hopkins University Press. 

 

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

 College Choice and Career Planning Tools

Innovation and Reform

Higher Education Policy

Data Sources

Trade publications

 

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