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

This article is an update to our June 2025 Higher Education Inquirer report, Tech Titans, Ideologues, and the Future of American Higher Education. Since that report, the landscape of higher education has evolved dramatically. New developments — the increasing influence of billionaire philanthropists like Larry Ellison, private-equity figures such as Marc Rowan, and the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk — have intensified the pressures on traditional colleges and universities. This update examines how these forces intersect with ideology, governance, financial power, and institutional vulnerability to reshape the future of American higher education.

American higher education is under pressure from multiple directions, including financial strain, declining enrollment, political hostility, and technological disruption. Yet perhaps the greatest challenge comes from powerful outsiders who are actively reshaping how education is perceived, delivered, and valued. Figures such as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Alex Karp, Charlie Kirk, Larry Ellison, and Marc Rowan are steering resources, ideology, and policy in ways that threaten traditional universities’ missions. Each brings a distinct ideology and strategy, but their combined influence represents an existential pressure on the system.

Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle, has pledged to give away nearly all his fortune and already directs hundreds of millions toward research, medicine, and education-related causes. Through the Ellison Institute of Technology, he funds overseas campuses and scholarship programs at institutions like the University of Oxford. Ellison represents a “disruptor” who does not challenge degrees outright but reshapes the allocation of educational resources toward elite, globally networked research.

The University of Phoenix cyberbreach is more than another entry in the long list of attacks on higher education. It is the clearest evidence yet of how private equity, aging enterprise software, and institutional neglect have converged to create a catastrophic cybersecurity landscape across American colleges and universities. What happened in the summer of 2025 was not an unavoidable act of foreign aggression. It was the culmination of years of cost-cutting, inadequate oversight, and a misplaced faith in legacy vendors that no longer control their own risks.

The story begins with the Russian-speaking Clop cyber-extortion group, one of the most sophisticated data-theft organizations operating today. In early August, Clop quietly began exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in Oracle’s E-Business Suite, a platform widely used for payroll, procurement, student employment, vendor relations, and financial aid administration. Oracle’s EBS system, decades old and deeply embedded across higher education, was never designed for modern threat environments. As soon as Clop identified the flaw—later assigned CVE-2025-61882—the group launched a coordinated campaign that compromised dozens of major institutions before Oracle even acknowledged the problem.

Among the most heavily affected institutions was the University of Phoenix. Attackers gained access to administrative systems and exfiltrated highly sensitive data: names, Social Security numbers, bank accounts, routing numbers, vendor records, and financial-aid-related information belonging to students, faculty, staff, and contractors. The breach took place in August, but Phoenix did not disclose the incident until November 21, and only after Clop publicly listed the university on its extortion site. Even after forced disclosure, Phoenix offered only vague assurances about “unauthorized access” and refused to provide concrete numbers or a full accounting of what had been stolen.

Phoenix was not alone. Harvard University confirmed that Clop had stolen more than a terabyte of data from its Oracle systems. Dartmouth College acknowledged that personal and financial information for more than a thousand individuals had been accessed, though the total is almost certainly much higher. At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators said only that unauthorized access had occurred, declining to detail the scale. What links these incidents is not prestige, geography, or mission. It is dependency on Oracle’s aging administrative software and a sector-wide failure to adapt to a threat environment dominated by globally coordinated cybercrime operations.

Marc Rowan, co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management, has leveraged private-equity wealth to influence higher education governance. He gave $50 million to Penn’s Wharton School, funding faculty and research initiatives and has recently pushed alumni to withhold donations over issues of campus policy and antisemitism. Rowan also helped shape the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence, linking federal funding to compliance with ideologically driven standards. He exemplifies how private wealth can steer university governance and policy, reshaping priorities on a national scale. Together, Ellison and Rowan illustrate the twin dynamics of power and influence destabilizing higher education: immense private wealth, and the ambition to reshape institutions according to their own vision.

With these powerful outsiders shaping the landscape, traditional universities increasingly face pressures to prioritize elite, donor-driven projects over broad public missions. Private funding favors high-prestige initiatives over public-access education, and large contributors can dictate leadership and policy directions. University priorities shift toward profitable or ideologically aligned projects, creating a two-tier system in which elite, insulated institutions grow while public universities struggle to compete, widening disparities in access and quality.

The stakes of this upheaval have become tragically tangible. The assassination of Charlie Kirk in 2025 was a horrific reminder that conflicts over ideology, money, and influence are not abstract. Violence against public figures engaged in higher education policy and advocacy underscores the intensity of polarization and the human costs of these struggles. Such events cast a shadow over campuses, donor boards, and political advocacy alike, highlighting that the battle over the future of education is contested not only in boardrooms and legislatures but in life and death.

Students face shrinking access to affordable, publicly supported higher education, particularly those without means or connections to elite institutions. Faculty may encounter restrictions on academic freedom and institutional autonomy, as donor preferences and political pressures increasingly shape hiring, curriculum, and governance. Society risks losing the traditional public mission of universities — fostering critical thinking, civic engagement, and broad social mobility — as education becomes more commodified, prioritizing elite outcomes over the public good.

Building on our June 2025 report, this update underscores the accelerating influence of tech titans, ideologues, and billionaire philanthropists. Figures such as Ellison and Rowan are reshaping not just funding streams but governance structures, while the assassination of Charlie Kirk painfully illustrates the human stakes involved. Traditional colleges face a stark choice: maintain their public mission — democratic access, critical inquiry, and civic purpose — or retreat into survival mode, prioritizing donor dollars, corporate partnerships, and prestige. The pressures highlighted in June are not only continuing but intensifying, and the consequences — for students, faculty, and society — remain profound.

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Sources

Fortune: Larry Ellison pledges nearly all fortune (fortune.com)
Times Higher Education: Ellison funds Oxford scholars (timeshighereducation.com)
Almanac UPenn: Rowan gift to Wharton (almanac.upenn.edu)
Inquirer: Rowan donor pressure at Penn (inquirer.com)
Inquirer: Rowan and Trump’s Compact (inquirer.com)
Higher Education Inquirer original article (highereducationinquirer.org)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The Five Pillars of the College Meltdown (Dec. 15, 2025)

• Kleptocracy, Militarism, Colonialism: A Counterrecruiting Call for Students and Families (Dec. 7, 2025)

• Undervalued, Overworked, Underpaid: The Hidden Struggle of Healthcare Support Workers (Sep. 20, 2025)

• The War on Education: Reclaiming Critical Thought in an Age of Fascism by Henry Giroux (June 9, 2025)

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

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

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

AmericaFest After Charlie Kirk: Conservative Youth Mobilization and the Long Shadow Over U.S. Campuses

PHOENIX — Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest returned to Phoenix this December as both a spectacle and a reckoning. The annual conference, one of the most influential gatherings in conservative youth politics, unfolded for the first time without its founder, Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated earlier this year. His death transformed what is typically a triumphalist rally into a memorialized assertion of continuity, as speakers, organizers, and attendees sought to project strength, unity, and purpose amid uncertainty about the movement’s future.

AmericaFest 2025 featured a familiar lineup of conservative politicians, media figures, donors, and student activists. Speakers framed the event as proof that the movement Kirk helped build would not only survive but expand. The rhetoric emphasized free speech, opposition to what participants described as ideological capture of higher education, and preparation for the 2026 midterm elections. Yet outside the convention hall, and within higher education itself, Turning Point USA’s presence remains deeply contested.

For almost a decade, Higher Education Inquirer has documented Turning Point USA’s activities on college campuses, tracing a pattern that extends well beyond conventional student organizing. While the group presents itself as a champion of intellectual diversity, its methods have repeatedly generated controversy, fear, and institutional strain. Central to those concerns is TPUSA’s use of public targeting tools, including its Professor Watchlist, which names faculty members accused of promoting so-called leftist ideology. Critics argue that such lists chill academic freedom, invite harassment, and undermine the basic principles of scholarly inquiry. Faculty across the country have reported intimidation, threats, and reputational harm after being singled out.

In August 2025, Higher Education Inquirer published a campus warning urging students to avoid contact with Turning Point USA. That advisory was grounded in years of investigative reporting, campus testimony, and analysis of the organization’s tactics. The warning cited confrontational recruitment practices, opaque funding relationships, and a political strategy that often prioritizes provocation over dialogue. It also highlighted TPUSA’s expansion beyond higher education into school boards and K–12 education, raising alarms among educators about the normalization of partisan activism within public education systems.

AmericaFest took place against this backdrop of sustained scrutiny. While speakers inside the convention center invoked Kirk as a martyr for free speech, HEI’s reporting has consistently shown that TPUSA’s operational model frequently relies on pressure campaigns rather than open debate. The organization’s portrayal of campuses as hostile territory has, in practice, fostered a siege mentality that rewards conflict and amplifies polarization. University administrators are often left navigating legal obligations to recognize student groups while absorbing the consequences of protests, security costs, and fractured campus climates.

The aftermath of Kirk’s death has further intensified these dynamics. TPUSA leaders report a surge in student interest in forming new chapters, developments that have already reignited recognition battles at colleges and universities nationwide. Some institutions have approved chapters over strong objections from faculty and students, citing free-speech obligations. Others have resisted, pointing to TPUSA’s documented history of harassment and disruption. These disputes expose the growing tension between constitutional protections and institutional responsibility for student safety and academic integrity.

AmericaFest also underscored TPUSA’s evolution into a well-funded national political operation with deep donor networks and significant influence over educational discourse. What began as a student-focused nonprofit now operates as a coordinated political apparatus embedded within academic spaces. This shift raises fundamental questions about whether TPUSA should still be treated as an ordinary student organization or recognized as a strategic political entity operating on campus terrain.

For supporters, AmericaFest was a declaration that conservative youth politics will advance undeterred by tragedy or criticism. For higher-education observers, it was a reminder that the struggle over campuses is not merely ideological but structural. The question is no longer whether conservative voices belong in higher education; they do. The question is whether organizations built on surveillance, targeting, and intimidation can coexist with universities’ core mission as spaces for inquiry rather than instruments of ideological warfare.

As Turning Point USA charts its post-Kirk future, colleges and universities face a parallel challenge. They must defend free expression without surrendering academic freedom, protect student participation without enabling political exploitation, and ensure that campuses remain places of learning rather than permanent battlegrounds. AmericaFest may celebrate momentum, but the consequences of that momentum will continue to unfold far beyond the convention floor, in classrooms, faculty offices, and student communities across the country.

Sources

Associated Press. “Turning Point youth conference begins in Phoenix without founder Charlie Kirk.” December 2025.
https://apnews.com/article/turning-point-charlie-kirk-americafest-c1ef8d3535191e58ce2aa731d242be

Higher Education Inquirer. “Campus Warning: Avoid Contact with Turning Point USA.” August 2025.
https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/08/campus-warning-avoid-contact-with.html

Higher Education Inquirer. Turning Point USA coverage archive.
https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/search?q=TPUSA

Rahm Emanuel at ASU+GSV Summit: Reform Rhetoric and Elite Power Dynamics

The 2026 ASU+GSV Summit’s announcement of Rahm Emanuel as a featured speaker paints a portrait of a seasoned education leader: expanding Pre‑K, lengthening school days, and championing accountability in public schooling. It positions him as a “national voice for bold, outcomes‑driven education reform” with the promise that “ALL students can succeed.” But a closer look at Emanuel’s record and the broader political and economic networks he’s part of reveals a gap between reform rhetoric and the structural realities facing American education.

The summit blurb highlights aspects of Emanuel’s mayoral record—like longer school days and universal Pre‑K—as unequivocal successes. Yet critics note that these reforms came alongside aggressive school closures and policies that often prioritized test scores over community stability and equitable resources for historically underserved neighborhoods. The celebration of “outcomes‑driven” approaches overlooks the real impacts of top‑down accountability regimes on students and educators.

A deeper problem in education policy today isn’t just about individual initiatives, it’s about who shapes the agenda and why. Investigations into elite influence, such as The Pritzker Family Paradox, show how wealthy political families and private capital can steer education systems in ways that benefit investors as much as—if not more than—students. Members of that same elite class move fluidly between public office, philanthropic boards, and private education ventures, blurring lines between public good and private gain.

The concerns about elite influence extend beyond k‑12 reform into higher education. The University of Phoenix—the nation’s largest for-profit university—has faced long-running federal scrutiny that has only intensified questions about the role of private equity and political connections in education. In 2018, the Federal Trade Commission was reported to be investigating the University of Phoenix’s practices more than two years after the institution was taken private (in part) by the Vistria Group, a firm led by a longtime Obama associate. The deal pushed the university out of public markets, reducing transparency even as the FTC pursued inquiries into marketing, recruitment, financial aid, billing practices, and more. This story is more than an isolated headline. It links education policy, political networks, and private equity in ways that should make anyone skeptical of sanitized reform narratives. The University of Phoenix’s federal investigation—set against its massive enrollment and heavy reliance on federal student aid—raises serious questions about how for-profit models and political influence intersect to shape student outcomes and taxpayer exposure to risk.

With Emanuel positioned at the ASU+GSV Summit as a visionary reformer, it’s worth asking what kind of reform is being championed—and for whom. Emanuel’s career path mirrors that of many elite education influencers: from municipal leadership to Washington corridors to national stages, often amplifying narratives that celebrate managerial efficiency and data-driven accountability while underemphasizing power imbalances, market incentives, and community impacts. Putting Emanuel on a summit stage alongside investors and administrators reinforces a reform ecosystem driven by elite networks, where visibility and messaging often outpace substantive change in classrooms or communities that have long been underserved.

Attendees of the summit and observers of national education policy deserve more than polished bios and upbeat messaging. They deserve transparent discussions about who benefits from current education reforms and who loses, critical engagement with the role of private capital and political influence in shaping everything from early education to college financing, and honest reflection on how policy levers affect students, especially those from historically marginalized communities. Platforms like ASU+GSV should widen the lens beyond elite testimonials and market-friendly case studies to include voices that challenge entrenched interests and demand accountability not just in language, but in structural outcomes. Real transformation will not come from repackaging reform as spectacle; it will come from confronting the systems that continue to produce inequity in American education.

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Sources

1. The Pritzker Family Paradox: Elite Power, Philanthropy, and Education Policy. Higher Education Inquirer. July 2025. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/07/the-pritzker-family-paradox-elite-power.html

2. FTC Investigates University of Phoenix After Sale to Obama-Linked Firm. Daily Caller. July 22, 2018. https://dailycaller.com/2018/07/22/obama-university-phoenix-probe/

3. ASU+GSV Summit 2026: Rahm Emanuel Speaker Announcement. https://www.asugsvsummit.com

The Five Pillars of the College Meltdown

Demographics

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

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

Economics

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

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

Integrity (Fraud and Trust)

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

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

Governance and Labor

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

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

Culture and Public Trust

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

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

The Pillars Weakening 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources and References

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

Cybercrime, Hypocrisy, and the Geopolitics of Blame: Why Russia Isn’t Always the Enemy

In the summer of 2025, the CLOP hacking group—operating from Russia—exploited weaknesses at the University of Phoenix, exposing sensitive data on thousands of students and staff. The breach was devastating, yet Russia was not officially condemned as an adversary.

The contrast with U.S. policy toward countries like Venezuela is striking. Venezuela faces crippling sanctions, economic isolation, and constant political pressure under the banner of protecting democracy and human rights. Meanwhile, Russian-based cybercriminals are allowed to inflict real harm on U.S. institutions with little official pushback. The reason, officials say, is a lack of direct evidence tying these attacks to the Russian state. But the discrepancy reveals a deeper hypocrisy: punitive measures are applied selectively, often based on geopolitical convenience rather than consistent principles.

CLOP-style attacks exploit vulnerabilities in U.S. institutions. Universities, especially those operating on outdated IT systems and under private equity pressures, are frequent targets. Students—many already burdened by debt and systemic inequities—bear the brunt when personal data is exposed. Yet the broader conversation rarely extends to foreign actors who take advantage of these weaknesses or to the structural failures within U.S. education.

Venezuela’s citizens suffer sanctions and economic hardship, while Russian cybercriminals operate from the safety of a country that tolerates them, so long as domestic interests remain untouched. This double standard undermines the credibility of U.S. claims to principled leadership and exposes the uneven moral framework guiding foreign policy.

Higher education becomes a battleground in this selective application of power. Cyberattacks, fraud, and systemic negligence converge to threaten students and faculty, revealing the real victims of international hypocrisy. Protecting U.S. institutions requires acknowledging both the foreign actors who exploit weaknesses and the domestic policies and practices that leave them vulnerable.

The CLOP breach is more than a single incident—it is a reflection of a system that punishes some nations for internal crises while tolerating damage inflicted by others on critical domestic infrastructure. Until U.S. policy addresses both sides of this equation, the cost will continue to fall on the most vulnerable: the students, staff, and faculty caught in the crossfire.

Sources: U.S. Department of Education reports; investigative journalism on CLOP and Russian cybercrime; analyses of U.S.-Venezuela sanctions and policy. 

University of Phoenix, Oracle, and the Russian Cybercrime Crisis That Should Never Have Been Allowed to Happen

The University of Phoenix breach is more than another entry in the long list of attacks on higher education. It is the clearest evidence yet of how private equity, aging enterprise software, and institutional neglect have converged to create a catastrophic cybersecurity landscape across American colleges and universities. What happened in the summer of 2025 was not an unavoidable act of foreign aggression. It was the culmination of years of cost-cutting, inadequate oversight, and a misplaced faith in legacy vendors that no longer control their own risks.

The story begins with the Russian-speaking Clop cyber-extortion group, one of the most sophisticated data-theft organizations operating today. In early August, Clop quietly began exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability in Oracle’s E-Business Suite, a platform widely used for payroll, procurement, student employment, vendor relations, and financial aid administration. Oracle’s EBS system, decades old and deeply embedded across higher education, was never designed for modern threat environments. As soon as Clop identified the flaw—later assigned CVE-2025-61882—the group launched a coordinated campaign that compromised dozens of major institutions before Oracle even acknowledged the problem.

Among the most heavily affected institutions was the University of Phoenix. Attackers gained access to administrative systems and exfiltrated highly sensitive data: names, Social Security numbers, bank accounts, routing numbers, vendor records, and financial-aid related information belonging to students, faculty, staff, and contractors. The breach took place in August, but Phoenix did not disclose the incident until November 21, and only after Clop publicly listed the university on its extortion site. Even after forced disclosure, Phoenix offered only vague assurances about “unauthorized access” and refused to provide concrete numbers or a full accounting of what had been stolen.

Phoenix was not alone. Harvard University confirmed that Clop had stolen more than a terabyte of data from its Oracle systems. Dartmouth College acknowledged that personal and financial information for more than a thousand individuals had been accessed, though the total is almost certainly much higher. At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators said only that unauthorized access had occurred, declining to detail the scale. What links these incidents is not prestige, geography, or mission. It is dependency on Oracle’s aging administrative software and a sector-wide failure to adapt to a threat environment dominated by globally coordinated cybercrime operations.

But Phoenix stands apart from its peers because Phoenix, Apollo Global Management, and The Vistria Group should have known better. This institution has long operated at a scale more comparable to a financial-services company than a school. It handles vast volumes of sensitive data connected to federal student aid, identity verification, private loans, tuition reimbursement programs, and employer partnerships. A university with this profile should have been treating cybersecurity as a core institutional function, not an afterthought.

Apollo Global Management, which owned Phoenix during a period of enrollment decline and regulatory exposure, was fully aware of the vulnerabilities associated with online enrollment, financial-aid processing, and aging ERP infrastructure. Apollo’s business model is built on risk analysis and mitigation, yet it consistently underinvested in sustainable IT modernization while focusing on financial engineering and cost extraction. Phoenix emerged from Apollo’s ownership with significant technical debt and a compliance culture centered on limiting institutional liability rather than strengthening institutional defenses.

When The Vistria Group, through Phoenix Education Partners, acquired the university, it promised a new era of stability and digital transformation. Instead, it delivered a familiar private-equity formula: leaner operations, staff reductions, increased reliance on contractors, and deferred infrastructure investment. All of this occurred as ransomware groups such as Clop, LockBit, BlackCat, and Vice Society were escalating attacks on universities. The MOVEit crisis, the Accellion breach, and dozens of ransomware incidents had already demonstrated that higher education was an increasingly profitable target. Vistria had every signal necessary to understand the stakes, yet Phoenix entered the summer of 2025 with outdated Oracle systems, slow patch deployment, inadequate monitoring, and minimal segmentation between financial-aid and general administrative systems.

The breach was not a surprise. It was an inevitability. A university holding the sensitive financial and identity data of hundreds of thousands of current and former students, staff, and vendors cannot protect itself with minimal investment and outdated architecture. When Clop exploited Oracle’s flaw, Phoenix lacked the tools to detect lateral movement early, the expertise to identify unusual activity quickly, and the governance structure to respond decisively. The institution did not discover the breach on its own; it reacted only when a criminal syndicate announced its presence to the world.

This incident exposes a broader truth about higher education infrastructure in the United States. Universities have grown dependent on enterprise vendors whose systems are increasingly brittle and whose security models no longer meet contemporary requirements. Meanwhile, private-equity owners emphasize cost containment and short-term returns over long-term stability. The University of Phoenix breach is the result of those conditions converging with a global cybercrime ecosystem that is more organized, better funded, and more technically agile than the institutions it targets.

Students, faculty, staff, and vendors will bear the consequences for years. Many will face identity theft, fraudulent activity, and the lingering fear that their most sensitive information is circulating indefinitely on criminal marketplaces. Phoenix, like other affected institutions, will offer credit monitoring and generic assurances. But the public disclosures arrived too late, and the underlying failures were years in the making.

Phoenix should have known better.
Apollo Global Management should have known better.
The Vistria Group should have known better.
And American higher education should finally recognize that it can no longer treat cybersecurity as a line-item expense. It is now one of the central pillars of institutional survival.

Sources
Bleeping Computer
Security Affairs
The Register
CPO Magazine
The Record
University of Phoenix breach notifications
Clop leak site monitoring data

HEI Investigation: ED FOIA Digging Up Suspected FAFSA Fraud at the University of Phoenix

26-00809-F

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is requesting:

1. All OIG investigations, reviews, case summaries, fraud-ring investigations, or closed case files (including referrals from Federal Student Aid) from January 1, 2008 to the present that involve or reference:

*the University of Phoenix (any campus or online division),

*Apollo Group, Apollo Education Group, or Phoenix Education Partners (PXED), or

*any individual or organized group that used the University of Phoenix to commit FAFSA fraud, including but not limited to identity theft, false FAFSA applications, fabricated enrollment for Title IV eligibility, Pell-runner schemes, or fraud connected to distance-education programs.

2. Any OIG audit reports, program reviews, draft findings, risk assessments, or internal memoranda from January 1, 2008 to the present that evaluate the vulnerability of the University of Phoenix to:

*FAFSA fraud

*Pell Grant fraud

*Title IV fraud rings

*identity-based financial aid fraud

*“Pell runner” activity

*online/distance-education fraud schemes linked to FAFSA misuse.

3. All institutional-level fraud-referral files, Student Aid Reports (SARs) flagged for suspected fraud, or records of suspicious-activity referrals submitted to OIG or generated internally by OIG relating to FAFSA fraud or suspected FAFSA manipulation at the University of Phoenix (January 1, 2008–present).

4. Any aggregate or institution-specific data summaries listing the number of FAFSA-related fraud referrals, confirmed FAFSA fraud cases, or Title IV fraud-ring participants associated with the University of Phoenix.

5. All communications between OIG and Federal Student Aid (FSA) from January 1, 2008 to the present that reference the University of Phoenix in connection with:

*FAFSA fraud

*Pell Grant fraud 

*fraud-ring activity

*suspected manipulation of federal aid eligibility, or abnormal application-risk patterns associated with University of Phoenix applicants

This request is limited to closed investigations and final reports to avoid any interference with ongoing law-enforcement matters. If portions of any records must be withheld, please release all reasonably segregable non-exempt material. (Date Range for Record Search: From 12/31/2008 To 12/04/2025)

Hyper-Deregulation and the College Meltdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

Sources

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

HEI Investigation: FAFSA (Financial Aid) Fraud

26-00780-F  

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

26-00779-F  

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

26-00777-F  

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

26-00732-F  

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

26-00023-F-IG  

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

26-00709-F  

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

26-00697-F

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

26-00697-F

26-00697-F

University of Phoenix’s Russian Cyber Breach: Another Symptom of a System in Decline

[Editor's note: The Higher Education Inquirer has been tracking cybercrime and FAFSA fraud in higher education. In August, we covered ghost students at a number of schools. It's notable that the University of Phoenix identified the Russian cybersecurity breach the day after its parent company's Earnings Call.]

The University of Phoenix has disclosed a major Russian cyber breach that again raises serious questions about governance, infrastructure, and public accountability at one of the most scrutinized institutions in American higher education. According to the institution, the intrusion began in August 2025, when attackers exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Oracle’s E-Business Suite, the enterprise financial system the university uses to manage sensitive operational and personal data.

The breach went undetected for months. By the time University of Phoenix identified the incident on November 21, 2025, the attackers had already siphoned personal and financial information belonging to students, faculty, staff, and suppliers. The university has confirmed that the attack is part of an extortion campaign associated with the Clop ransomware gang, known for targeting large organizations running legacy Oracle and MOVEit systems.

While the university has emphasized that it is still “reviewing the impacted data,” what that means in practice is that thousands of people now face an extended period of uncertainty, waiting to learn what information—Social Security numbers, banking records, home addresses, transcripts, or vendor payment details—may now be circulating beyond the institution’s control. Because the compromised Oracle EBS platform sits at the center of finance, payroll, procurement, and accounts receivable, the range of possible exposure is significant.

The breach intersects with a larger pattern. University of Phoenix has long branded itself as a technologically adept institution serving working adults, yet this incident lays bare the vulnerabilities created by years of cost-cutting, outsourcing, and reliance on aging software. This model—common across the for-profit sector—treats cybersecurity as a compliance box rather than a core operational priority. When institutions depend on brittle infrastructure while managing large volumes of sensitive data, the result is predictable: preventable failures that impose real harm on people with little recourse.

Higher education, especially the for-profit sector, has chronically underinvested in secure, modernized systems even as it continues to collect data from some of the country’s most economically vulnerable students. The University of Phoenix breach underscores this contradiction. An institution with a long record of federal investigations, poor student outcomes, and aggressive recruiting now faces yet another crisis of trust—one that cannot be brushed aside with templated notifications or promises of future improvements.

Whether this breach becomes a catalyst for reform is uncertain. Much depends on how transparent the university chooses to be, whether it fully informs regulatory agencies, and whether affected individuals receive more than form letters and a year of credit monitoring. If prior incidents across the sector are any indication, meaningful accountability may once again be elusive.

But the stakes remain high. Breaches of this scale do not simply reflect technical flaws; they reflect policy choices. The people who pay the price are not executives or investors but students, staff, faculty, and contractors whose data is now at risk—individuals who entrusted the university with information essential to their livelihoods.

Sources
University of Phoenix public disclosure, November 2025
Oracle E-Business Suite vulnerability reporting
Clop ransomware gang activity reports
Higher education cybersecurity incident archives

Is the Federal Trade Commission FOIA program still in operation?

In light of recent developments at the Federal Trade Commission under the current administration — including staffing reductions and a temporary 2025 government shutdown — many observers and researchers are questioning whether the FTC’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program is still functioning. The answer remains: yes — the FOIA program is still formally operational, but its capacity and responsiveness appear diminished under current conditions.

The FTC continues to administer FOIA through its Office of General Counsel (OGC), which processes all FOIA requests. As of the 2024 fiscal year, the FTC’s FOIA Unit comprised four attorneys, five government-information specialists, and one paralegal, with occasional support from contractors and other staff. In that year, the agency processed 1,919 requests (and 29 appeals), up from 1,812 in 2023. The agency’s publicly available “FOIA Handbook,” last updated in April 2025, continues to outline how requests should be submitted, what records are on the public record, and how exemptions are applied.

The FTC’s website still provides instructions for submitting a FOIA request via its online portal, email, fax, or mail. That means requests remain legally eligible — including those related to for-profit colleges, student loan servicers, institutional behavior, complaints, or decision-making memos.

However, HEI’s own experience in 2025 highlights some of the challenges with the FTC’s current FOIA responsiveness. In January 2025, we submitted a FOIA request asking for a record of complaints against the University of Phoenix, but have no record of a response. In August 2025 we did receive a substantive response related to complaints regarding a student loan company, but the number of complaints appeared lower than we expected. On November 30, 2025, we received an automated response to our FOIA request about AidVantage, a student loan servicer and subsidiary of Maximus. While we did receive a reply, it reflected a stale message stating they would respond after the government reopened — even though the government had reopened on November 13.

These examples illustrate that while FOIA is formally operational, actual responsiveness has deteriorated. For years, HEI had a good relationship with the FTC, obtaining critical information for a number of investigations in a timely manner. It remains to be seen whether that reliability can be restored.

Compounding the issue are broader staffing and operational changes at the FTC. In testimony before Congress in May 2025, FTC Chair Andrew N. Ferguson reported that the agency began FY 2025 with about 1,315 personnel but had reduced to 1,221 full-time staff, with plans to potentially reduce further to around 1,100 — the lowest level in a decade. These staffing reductions coincide with scaled-back discretionary activities, such as rulemaking, public guidance publishing, and outreach. During the October 2025 lapse in government funding, the FTC announced that FOIA requests could still be submitted but would not be processed until appropriations resumed.

For researchers, journalists, and advocates — including those pursuing records related to for-profit colleges, student loan servicers, regulatory decisions, or historical investigations — FOIA remains a legally viable tool. The path is open, though response times are slower, staff resources are constrained, and releases may be more limited, especially for sensitive or exempt material.

Sources

Congressional budget testimony on FTC staffing and budget: https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118225/witnesses/HHRG-119-AP23-Wstate-FergusonA-20250515.pdf

FTC FOIA Handbook (April 2025): https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/FOIA-Handbook-April-2025.pdf

FTC 2024 Chief FOIA Officer Report (staffing, request volume): https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/chief-foia-officer-report-fy2024.pdf

FTC website instructions for submitting FOIA requests: https://www.ftc.gov/foia/make-foia-request

FTC 2025 shutdown plan showing FOIA processing paused during funding lapse: https://www.ftc.gov/ftc-is-closed

Reporting on FTC removal of business-guidance blogs in 2025: https://www.wired.com/story/federal-trade-commission-removed-blogs-critical-of-ai-amazon-microsoft/