A Syllabus of Resistance

Higher education today demands that we strip away illusions. The university is no longer a sanctuary of truth but a contested battleground of austerity, automation, and alienation. Students, adjuncts, and staff are caught in a cycle of debt, precarity, and surveillance. To resist, we need not another glossy strategic plan but a syllabus — a curriculum of solidarity, transparency, and rehumanization.

Debt defines the student experience. Student loan balances now exceed $1.77 trillion, and repayment programs like PSLF and income-driven repayment offer only partial relief. In 2024, as federal student loan payments resumed after a pandemic pause, millions of borrowers simply refused to pay, transforming individual debt into collective action. The Debt Collective has organized strikes and campaigns to cancel student debt, reframing borrowing as a political issue rather than a private burden. This movement challenges whether the entire financing model of higher education can survive.

Faculty labor is equally precarious. More than seventy percent of instructors are contingent, often earning poverty wages without benefits. At Harrisburg Area Community College, over 200 faculty went on strike in November 2025 after years of stalled negotiations, exemplifying a growing national labor movement against stagnant pay and weakened job security. Adjunct faculty unions at Rutgers and elsewhere continue to push back against layoffs and austerity measures. The crisis of contingent labor has moved from quiet exploitation to open confrontation.

Climate crisis compounds the meltdown. Universities expand globally in a frenzy of collegemania, while ignoring ecological collapse. Student activists demand divestment from fossil fuels, but boards often resist. At Princeton, campaigners uncovered that the university owns a controlling stake in PetroTiger, a fossil fuel company, profiting directly from extraction. Edge Hill University in the UK recently committed to divest from both fossil fuels and border security companies after sustained student pressure. The University of Illinois, despite pledging to divest years ago, still faces protests demanding action. These campaigns show that climate justice is inseparable from educational justice.

Surveillance intensifies alienation. Universities increasingly deploy corporate partnerships and AI tools to monitor student dissent. At the University of Houston, administrators contracted with Dataminr to scrape students’ social media activity during Palestine solidarity protests. Amnesty International has warned that tools like Palantir and Babel Street pose surveillance threats to student activists. Truthout reports that campuses have become laboratories for military-grade surveillance technology, punishing dissent and eroding trust. Education becomes transactional and disciplinary, leaving students reporting higher levels of stress and disconnection.

Resistance must also be moral. University governance remains hierarchical and opaque, resembling corporate boards more than democratic institutions. Calls for transparency and veritas are drowned out by branding campaigns and political capture. A pedagogy of resistance must be rooted in temperance, nonviolence, and solidarity. Rehumanization is the antidote to robostudents, roboworkers, and robocolleges. It is the refusal to be bots, debtors, or disposable labor, and the insistence on reclaiming education as a public good.

Developing a Democratic Syllabus of Resistance

This syllabus is not a catalog of courses but a call to action. Debt strikes, adjunct unionization, climate divestment campaigns, and surveillance pushback are fragments of a larger curriculum of resistance. But this syllabus is incomplete without you. Readers are invited to join in creating it — to add new units, case studies, and strategies that reflect the lived realities of students, workers, and communities.

For inspiration, see the Higher Education Inquirer’s earlier piece on Methods of Student Nonviolent Resistance, which documents the long history of campus activism and the evolving tactics of protest, persuasion, and noncooperation. That archive reminds us that resistance is not only possible but essential.

The classroom is everywhere, and the time is now.

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

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

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

Permanent War and the Moral Abdication of Leadership

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

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

Climate Collapse and the Silence of Those Who Know Better

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

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

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

The Suppression of Student Protest and the Fear of Moral Clarity

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

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

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

Mass Surveillance and the Bureaucratization of Fear

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

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

Inequality and the Insulation of Elites from Consequence

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

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

Social Media, AI, and the Automation of Moral Evasion

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

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

The Crisis Beneath the Crisis

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

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

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

Toward Moral Courage and Rehumanization

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

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

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

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

The Poisoning of the American Mind

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

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

Foreign Influence as Cognitive Warfare

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

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

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

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

The Role of Global Tech Elites

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

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

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

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

Higher Education’s Failure of Defense

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

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

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

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

A Domestic Willingness to Be Deceived

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

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

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

The Long-Term Consequences

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

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

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

Toward Intellectual Self-Defense

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

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

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

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

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Sources

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

College Meltdown 2026 (Glen McGhee)

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

The Waning of College Mania

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

White-Collar Unemployment and the Broken Value Proposition

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

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

Demographic Collapse and Institutional Failures

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

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

Student Debt, Inequality, and Loss of Legitimacy

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

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

The Road Ahead: Contraction, Consolidation, and Possibility

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

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

• substantial public reinvestment,

• free or low-cost pathways for essential programs,

• accountability for predatory institutions,

• democratized governance, and

• a commitment to racial and economic justice.

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

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

Higher Education Without Illusions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources & Further Reading:

• An American Sickness, Elisabeth Rosenthal

• Medical Apartheid, Harriet Washington

• Body and Soul, Alondra Nelson

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

The Expanding Crisis in U.S. Higher Education: OPMs, Student Loan Servicers, Deregulation, Robocolleges, AI, and the Collapse of Accountability

Across the United States, higher education is undergoing a dramatic and dangerous transformation. Corporate contractors, private equity firms, automated learning systems, and predatory loan servicers increasingly dictate how the system operates—while regulators remain absent and the media rarely reports the scale of the crisis. The result is a university system that serves investors and advertisers far more effectively than it serves students.

This evolution reflects a broader pattern documented by Harriet A. Washington, Alondra Nelson, Elisabeth Rosenthal, and Rebecca Skloot: institutions extracting value from vulnerable populations under the guise of public service. Today, many universities—especially those driven by online expansion—operate as financial instruments more than educational institutions.

The OPM Machine and Private Equity Consolidation

Online Program Managers (OPMs) remain central to this shift. Companies like 2U, Academic Partnerships—now Risepoint—and the restructured remnants of Wiley’s OPM division continue expanding into public universities hungry for tuition revenue. Revenue-sharing deals, often hidden from the public, let these companies keep up to 60% of tuition in exchange for aggressive online recruitment and mass-production of courses.

Much of this expansion is fueled by private equity, including Vistria Group, Apollo Global Management, and others that have poured billions into online contractors, publishing houses, test prep firms, and for-profit colleges. Their model prioritizes rapid enrollment growth, relentless marketing, and cost-cutting—regardless of educational quality.

Hyper-Deregulation and the Dismantling of ED

Under the Trump Administration, the federal government dismantled core student protections—Gainful Employment, Borrower Defense, incentive-compensation safeguards, and accreditation oversight. This “hyper-deregulation” created enormous loopholes that OPMs and for-profit companies exploited immediately.

Today, the Department of Education itself is being dismantled, leaving oversight fragmented, understaffed, and in some cases non-functional. With the cat away, the mice will play: predatory companies are accelerating recruitment and acquisition strategies faster than regulators can respond.

Servicers, Contractors, and Tech Platforms Feeding on Borrowers

A constellation of companies profit from the student loan system regardless of borrower outcomes:

• Maximus (AidVantage), which manages huge portfolios of federal student loans under opaque contracts.

• Navient, a longtime servicer repeatedly accused of steering borrowers into costly options.

• Sallie Mae, the original student loan giant, still profiting from private loans to risky borrowers.

• Chegg, which transitioned from textbook rental to an AI-driven homework-and-test assistance platform, driving new forms of academic dependency.

Each benefits from weak oversight and an increasingly automated, fragmented educational landscape.

Robocolleges, Robostudents, Roboworkers: The AI Cascade

Artificial Intelligence has magnified the crisis. Universities, under financial pressure, increasingly rely on automated instruction, chatbot advising, and algorithmic grading—what can be called robocolleges. Students, overwhelmed and unsupported, turn to AI tools for essays, homework, and exams—creating robostudents whose learning is outsourced to software rather than internalized.

Meanwhile, employers—especially those influenced by PE-backed workforce platforms—prioritize automation, making human workers interchangeable components in roboworker environments. This raises existential questions about whether higher education prepares people for stable futures or simply feeds them into unstable, algorithm-driven labor markets.

FAFSA Meltdowns, Fraud, and Academic Cheating

The collapse of the new FAFSA system, combined with widespread fraudulent applications, has destabilized enrollment nationwide. Colleges desperate for students have turned to risky recruitment pipelines that enable identity fraud, ghost students, and financial manipulation of aid systems.

Academic cheating, now industrialized through generative AI and contract-cheating platforms, further erodes the integrity of degrees while institutions look away to protect revenue.

Advertising and the Manufacture of “College Mania”

For decades, advertising has propped up the myth that a college degree—any degree, from any institution—guarantees social mobility. Universities, OPMs, lenders, test-prep companies, and ed-tech platforms spend billions on marketing annually. This relentless messaging drives families to take on debt and enroll in programs regardless of cost or quality.

College mania is not organic—it is manufactured. Advertising convinces the public to ignore warning signs that would be obvious in any other consumer market.

A Media Coverage Vacuum

Despite the scale of the crisis, mainstream media offers shockingly little coverage. Investigative journalism units have shrunk, education reporters are overstretched, and major outlets rely heavily on university advertising revenue. The result is a structural conflict of interest: the same companies responsible for predatory practices often fund the media organizations tasked with reporting on them.

When scandals surface—FAFSA failures, servicer misconduct, OPM exploitation—they often disappear within a day’s news cycle. The public remains unaware of how deeply corporate interests now shape higher education.

The Emerging Picture

The U.S. higher education system is no longer simply under strain—it is undergoing a corporate and technological takeover. Private equity owns the pipelines. OPMs run the online infrastructure. Tech companies moderate academic integrity. Servicers profit whether borrowers succeed or fail. Advertisers manufacture demand. Regulators are missing. The media is silent.

In contrast, many other countries maintain strong limits on privatization, enforce strict quality standards, and protect students as consumers. As Washington and Rosenthal argue, exploitation persists not because it is inevitable but because institutions allow—and profit from—it.

Unless the U.S. restores meaningful oversight, reins in private equity, ends predatory revenue-sharing models, rebuilds the Department of Education, and demands transparency across all contractors, the system will continue to deteriorate. And students, especially those already marginalized, will pay the price.

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Sources (Selection)

Harriet A. Washington – Medical Apartheid; Carte Blanche
Rebecca Skloot – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Elisabeth Rosenthal – An American Sickness
Alondra Nelson – Body and Soul
Stephanie Hall & The Century Foundation – work on OPMs and revenue sharing
Robert Shireman – analyses of for-profit colleges and PE ownership
GAO (Government Accountability Office) reports on OPMs and student loan servicing
ED OIG and FTC public reports on oversight failures (various years)
National Student Legal Defense Network investigations
Federal Student Aid servicer audits and public documentation

Federal Legal Reversal Upends Race‑Conscious Aid: What the DOJ Opinion Means for FAFSA Data Sharing and MSIs

In a dramatic reversal of long-standing federal support for minority students, the Department of Justice has declared that key programs serving historically Black and Hispanic-serving institutions are unconstitutional. The ruling targets race-conscious scholarship access and federal aid data sharing, effectively dismantling decades of policy designed to close educational gaps. For many MSIs and their students, the shift represents a Trump-era rollback of racial equity in higher education, leaving institutions scrambling to protect access and funding in a suddenly hostile legal landscape.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel has delivered what may be one of the most consequential legal opinions affecting federal education policy in decades: a sweeping conclusion that a suite of federal programs tied to minority‑serving institutions (MSIs) and race‑specific scholarships are unconstitutional under current equal‑protection jurisprudence. 

At the center of this interpretation is a fundamental shift in how federal racial criteria are viewed post-Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC. In that landmark affirmative‑action decision, the Supreme Court significantly tightened the permissible bounds of race‑conscious decision making. The DOJ memo applies that framework beyond admissions, asserting that programs awarding federal funds based on racial or ethnic enrollment thresholds — including MSI grant programs — “effectively employ a racial quota.” 

One particularly striking aspect of the opinion is its treatment of access to Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) data by the United Negro College Fund and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund — organizations that award scholarships targeted to students of specific racial or ethnic backgrounds. The opinion deems it unconstitutional for these groups to receive FAFSA applicant data because the statute enabling such sharing confers access only to entities that grant race‑specific awards. 

Supporters of aiding historically marginalized students and institutions view this as an unprecedented restriction that could severely constrain outreach and support for those populations. Critics charge the move fits a broader administrative pattern of dismantling federal race‑conscious programs and argue that it disregards the statutory authority Congress explicitly provided — including the discretionary authority vested in the Education Secretary to administer FAFSA data sharing.

As one expert aide pointed out in private correspondence, the statutory provision that enabled FAFSA access was framed with Secretary discretion in mind — meaning it was lawful as written. But with DOJ now labeling such practices as impermissibly discriminatory, liability has been reallocated onto the administrative apparatus itself. That shift, in effect, insulates senior officials — including the Secretary — from culpability once the practice ends, leaving career bureaucrats to unwind systems built over years.

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The Policy and Legal Stakes

For nearly four decades, the federal government has maintained a suite of targeted programs intended to close longstanding educational opportunity gaps. These include grants for MSIs, race‑specific scholarships, and data‑sharing mechanisms like FAFSA access that enable outreach to underrepresented students seeking financial aid.

Beginning in July 2025, the Department of Education began scaling back discretionary grants to MSIs after the U.S. Solicitor General declined to defend race‑based criteria in court, particularly the Hispanic‑Serving Institutions definition requiring at least 25% Hispanic enrollment. By September, the Department officially announced the planned termination of most MSI discretionary grant funds for FY2025 — a decision informed by the constitutional concerns later articulated in the DOJ opinion. 

Until now, many observers assumed that statutory authority and congressional backing provided a stable legal foundation for such programs. But the OLC’s memo challenges that assumption, concluding that race‑based eligibility criteria — whether for institutional support or student scholarships — are no longer defensible under current constitutional interpretation. 

The implications extend far beyond MSI grants. If organizations that provide targeted scholarships based on race or ethnicity can no longer receive key federal administrative data, the practical capacity of those groups to serve students could be significantly hampered.

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Political and Institutional Reactions

The DOJ opinion has drawn sharply polarized responses. Administration officials frame the memo as an affirmation of equal protection and a necessary correction to federal programs that, in their view, relied on impermissible racial criteria. Congressional allies of the Administration characterize the changes as ending “racial discrimination” in federal education policy.

Conversely, Democratic legislators and MSI leaders condemn the opinion as ideologically driven and harmful to institutions that serve historically underserved populations. Critics say the analysis ignores longstanding bipartisan congressional support for such programs and portends deep cuts in educational opportunity. 

Institutional leaders at a range of MSIs have expressed alarm, underlining that funding and support mechanisms now in jeopardy are “vital” to student success and campus mission. Many campuses are scrambling to assess fiscal exposure and consider contingency planning.

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Looking Ahead

With federal policy in flux and several legal questions unresolved, higher education professionals face an uncertain environment. Institutions historically supported by race‑conscious federal programs may need to rethink recruitment, financial aid outreach, and partnerships with scholarship providers. Meanwhile, advocates and lawmakers may pursue legislative fixes or constitutional litigation to reshuffle the legal landscape once more.

Whatever the outcome, the DOJ opinion marks a pivotal moment in federal student aid policy — one likely to reshape how race, equity, and opportunity are legally navigated in the years to come.

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HEI Reader Context: What This Means for MSIs

• Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs): Loss of FAFSA data access and potential cuts to discretionary MSI grants could disrupt scholarship outreach, enrollment initiatives, and pipeline programs designed to recruit and retain underrepresented students. HBCUs may need to develop alternative channels for financial aid outreach, including direct partnerships with donors and private scholarship organizations.

• Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs): Many HSIs rely on federal discretionary grants to supplement state funding and support programs for first-generation and low-income students. The DOJ opinion may force HSIs to reallocate institutional resources to cover programs previously funded through race-conscious federal grants.

• Scholarship Organizations: Groups like the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) may no longer receive FAFSA data, limiting their ability to identify eligible students efficiently. Expect increased reliance on outreach campaigns, social media, and partnerships with local school districts.

• Institutional Planning: MSIs should assess short-term financial exposure, prioritize scholarship communications, and explore private funding alternatives. Legal and policy monitoring will be critical as legislative or judicial responses evolve.

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Sources

1. Inside Higher Ed. “DOJ Report Declares MSIs Unconstitutional.” December 22, 2025. Link

2. Higher Ed Dive. “DOJ Says MSI Grant Funding Unconstitutional.” December 22, 2025. Link

3. ED.gov. “US Department of Education Ends Funding for Racially Discriminatory Discretionary Grant Programs, Minority-Serving Institutions.” July 2025. Link

4. EducationCounsel. “E-Update: September 22, 2025.” Link

The Meritocratic Mask Is Crumbling (Glen McGhee)

“The Merit Ladder”

You unlock the door to a university, and the corridor stretches infinitely upward. Every student walks the same stairwell, one step at a time. The walls are adorned with clocks, calculators, and grade sheets, ticking and tallying as if the universe itself measured effort with perfect fairness.

But something is wrong. Some students float effortlessly upward, their steps silent, their progress smooth. Others stumble on invisible obstacles, their feet dragging in ways the rules do not explain. They glance at the walls, at the clocks, at the calculators—every metric insists they are equal, every announcement proclaims fairness. Yet the disparity is undeniable.

A voice echoes from the ceiling, calm, clinical: “Merit is universal. Merit is measurable. Merit is scale-invariant.” The students nod, forced to believe, even as they watch their neighbors leap ahead. Some students whisper, “It’s not the merit—it’s the ladder.” And indeed, the ladder is uneven, its rungs hidden, shifted by invisible hands of wealth, culture, geography, and health.

In this world—the stairwell of American higher education—the illusion of fairness is maintained with meticulous care. But every so often, a student notices the truth, and then the voice falters, the clocks pause, and the corridors ripple with the secret that can no longer be hidden. For the myth of meritocracy is collapsing. The ladder was never fair, and now, as the illusion fades, everyone will see it.

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The Scale-Invariance Claim

For more than a century, American higher education has rested on an elegant but unspoken assumption: that the rules of meritocracy are scale-invariant. The ideology promises that any student—regardless of wealth, geography, culture, family background, or health—can climb the credential ladder. A student from a low-income rural household competes on the same metric as a student from an affluent suburb. A community college student is measured by the same ruler as an Ivy League undergraduate. Merit, the story goes, is constant across all scales.

This is the deep mathematical promise embedded in the system:
(X, merit) ≅ (X, λ·merit) for all λ > 0.
Change the scale—money, social capital, proximity, cultural background—and the metric of “merit” supposedly remains unchanged. Hard work is invariant. Ability is invariant. The measurement of learning is invariant.

But no part of this has ever been true. To understand the experience, one could step into Kafka’s The Trial, where invisible, arbitrary rules govern the fates of all, or into the unsettling dimensions of The Twilight Zone, where a carefully maintained illusion of fairness masks structural control. Episodes like “The Obsolete Man” or “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” illustrate societies where uniform rules are proclaimed but inequities are baked into every interaction—a perfect mirror for the fiction of meritocracy.

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The Characteristic Scales American Higher Ed Pretends Not to Have

Every foundational element of U.S. higher education has a characteristic scale. Once these scales are made visible, the meritocratic myth dissolves.

Financial scale.
With little money, a student cannot attend or persist. With substantial wealth, barriers disappear. Financial rescaling completely changes outcomes.

Social capital scale.
A family with generations of college experience confers knowledge, networks, and expectations that directly affect admissions, persistence, and post-graduation trajectories. First-generation students navigate blind. The system is not invariant under social capital rescaling.

Geographic scale.
Proximity to selective universities, high-performing high schools, or robust community college systems radically alters opportunity. Rural and small-town America operates at a completely different scale.

Cultural and linguistic scale.
Students whose home culture mirrors academic expectations “fit.” Students from culturally distant communities must perform costly translation work. This is not a scale-invariant environment.

Health and disability scale.
Students without health barriers move cleanly through the system. Students with disabilities or chronic illness face friction at every stage. Their outcomes follow a different curve.

A genuinely scale-invariant system would show consistent outcomes across all these starting positions. American higher education shows the opposite. The system has always been scale-dependent—and merit was never the dominant term.

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The Measurement Problem the Meritocracy Never Solved

The ideological foundation requires not only a scale-invariant world but a scale-invariant measurement system. GPA, grades, test scores, papers, and degrees must reliably track some underlying construct called “merit” or “learning.”

Higher education never developed such a construct. “Learning” is not stable across institutions or contexts. It is socially constructed daily by instructors with different philosophies, different constraints, and different biases. There is no psychometric framework that defines a scale-invariant measure of learning. The closest attempts—standardized testing regimes—have repeatedly collapsed under their own inequities.

Yet the system pretends that a 3.8 at an Ivy and a 3.2 at a regional university reflect a universal metric rather than two entirely different grading cultures.

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Grade Inflation and AI Cheating: The Mask Slips

Recent trends expose how fragile the entire measurement fiction has become.

Elite universities give A grades at unprecedented rates. Two-thirds of all grades at some institutions are now A’s. GPA averages well above 3.7 are defended as “signs of excellence,” but in practice they are rescalings of the ruler itself. Institutions under competitive prestige pressure simply adjust the metric to protect their reputation.

AI cheating accelerates the collapse. Students with resources buy tutoring, editing, and AI-powered writing tools. These tools outperform human novices. The ability to “perform merit” is now directly purchasable. The metric no longer measures writing ability or analytical thinking. It measures access to technology, coaching, and time.

The function of grades has shifted from signaling ability to signaling socioeconomic positioning. What was once ρ(ability) is now ρ(ability + money), with wealth as the dominant term.

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Literary and Cultural Parallels

This collapse is eerily familiar in literature and media. Kafka’s The Trial captures the experience of navigating opaque rules that punish effort unpredictably. Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 show societies that insist on fairness while structurally enforcing inequality. Ellison’s Invisible Man exposes the consequences of climbing a ladder rigged by invisible scales.

The Twilight Zone dramatized these dynamics for mass audiences. Episodes such as “The Obsolete Man”, “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”, and “The Shelter” depict societies where declared rules are universal, yet outcomes are determined by hidden advantages. These narratives echo the experience of students forced to believe in meritocracy even while the structural scales—wealth, family education, geography, culture, health—determine success.

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What “Never Was Meritocratic” Actually Means

When HEI reports that American higher education never was meritocratic, it is not a moral accusation. It is an empirical one. The system was constructed with characteristic scales baked in. Wealth, social capital, proximity, culture, and health have always determined trajectories.

The ideology of merit obscured those scales by promising invariance where none existed. The promise served to justify gatekeeping, tuition inflation, credential inflation, and systematic exclusion. Legacy admissions, donor influence, geographic disparities, and familial educational background were not aberrations—they were structural pillars.

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The Collapse of the Meritocratic Narrative

The contemporary system is unraveling because the myth of scale-invariance—its core ideological justification—has been exposed as untenable.

Grade inflation reveals that institutions adjust the metric to preserve prestige.
AI reveals that performance can be outsourced or purchased.
Credential inflation reveals that degrees are required because employers have no alternative signal—not because the degrees measure anything.
Homeschooling and private micro-schools reflect widespread disbelief in the system’s ability to measure learning.
Employer skepticism shows that the labor market no longer trusts the bachelor’s degree as a signal.

Once the legitimacy of the metric collapses, the legitimacy of the entire structure collapses with it.

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The Devastating Implication: A System Built on a Mathematical Fiction

A truly scale-invariant system would show no significant correlation between wealth and degree attainment, no legacy effects, no geographic disparities, and no demographic patterning. The opposite is true in every dimension.

This system is not failing to fulfill its meritocratic promise. It never could fulfill it. It was designed for scale-dependence and shielded by the promise of scale-invariance.

Now that the mask is slipping, the $80,000 price tags, the exclusionary admissions processes, the credential inflation, and the crushing student debt load are losing their ideological justification. Without the fiction that merit is meaningfully and consistently measured, the system’s rationale dissolves.

The crisis of American higher education is not primarily a financial crisis or a demographic crisis. It is a legitimacy crisis. The foundational myth—meritocracy as scale-invariance—has collapsed. And with it, the justification for the entire credentialing apparatus is beginning to collapse as well.

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Sources
Higher Education Inquirer archives on grade inflation, admissions inequities, and credential inflation.
John Beach’s work on the social construction of “learning.”
HEI reporting on AI cheating, K-12 system collapse, employer distrust, and the shifting meaning of academic credentials.
Franz Kafka, The Trial
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
George Orwell, 1984
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Twilight Zone episodes: “The Obsolete Man,” “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” “The Shelter”

Conspiracies, Influence, and Grief: The Candace Owens–Erika Kirk Controversy Through a Higher Education Lens

The September 2025 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk sent shockwaves through the political and academic worlds. It also ignited a public feud between two figures whose influence stretches across campus activism and national media: Candace Owens, a former Turning Point USA (TPUSA) strategist turned media provocateur, and Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk and newly appointed leader of TPUSA. The conflict exposes not only the personal and political stakes involved but also the broader dynamics of media influence, ideological factionalism, and the politics of grief in contemporary higher education.

Charlie Kirk: Architect of Campus Controversy

Charlie Kirk built his public persona on provocation and confrontation. He staged highly orchestrated debates on college campuses, often targeting liberal-leaning students with “Prove Me Wrong” events that were designed to go viral. Turning Point USA’s social media strategy amplified these conflicts, rewarding spectacle over substantive discussion. Kirk also courted controversy through statements on race and opportunity, claiming in interviews that a Black woman had “taken his slot” at West Point, and through his unabashed support of fossil fuels, rejecting many climate mitigation policies.

Under Kirk’s leadership, TPUSA expanded its influence with aggressive initiatives. The Professor Watchlist cataloged faculty allegedly promoting leftist propaganda, drawing condemnation from academic freedom advocates who argued it chilled open debate and exposed professors to harassment. In 2019, TPUSA, through its affiliated nonprofit Turning Point Action, acquired Students for Trump, integrating campus organizing with national political campaigns. These moves cemented Kirk’s reputation as a strategist who thrived on conflict, spectacle, and the orchestration of young conservative voices, setting the stage for the posthumous clashes between Owens and Erika Kirk.

Candace Owens: Insider Knowledge Meets Provocation

Candace Owens leveraged her experience as a TPUSA strategist into a national media presence. Her commentary is known for being provocative, frequently conspiratorial, and sometimes antisemitic. After Kirk’s death, Owens publicly questioned the official narrative, hinting that TPUSA leadership may have failed Kirk or been complicit. She amplified unverified reports, including accounts of suspicious aircraft near the crime scene, drawing criticism for exploiting tragedy for attention. Owens’ stature as a former insider gave her claims credibility in some circles, but her approach exemplifies the hazards of insider knowledge weaponized against organizations and individuals in moments of vulnerability.

Erika Kirk: Navigating Grief and Ideological Contradiction

Erika Kirk’s public response has been markedly different. As TPUSA’s new CEO and widow of its co-founder, she emphasized factual communication, transparency, and respect for grieving families. Yet her messaging presents a striking tension. She has publicly urged women to “stay at home and have children,” even as she leads a major national organization herself. This contradiction highlights the challenges faced by leaders whose personal actions do not neatly align with ideological prescriptions, especially within high-profile, media-saturated contexts.

Erika Kirk’s stance against conspiracy and misinformation underscores the responsibilities of institutional leadership in politically charged environments. By rejecting Owens’ speculation and emphasizing ethical communication, she models crisis management that prioritizes credibility and accountability, even as ideological tensions complicate her public image.

The Groypers: External Pressure on Campus Politics

The feud did not remain internal. The Groypers, a far-right network led by Nick Fuentes, inserted themselves into the controversy, criticizing TPUSA for insufficient ideological purity and aligning with Owens’ confrontational rhetoric. Their intervention escalated tensions, highlighting how external actors can exploit internal disputes to influence narratives, polarize supporters, and pressure campus organizations. The Groypers’ involvement illustrates the precarious environment student-focused organizations face, where internal conflict can quickly become a battleground for external ideological agendas.

Media, Campus Power, and Ethical Considerations

The Owens–Kirk conflict exemplifies the challenges inherent in politically engaged campus organizations. Insider knowledge can confer authority, but it can also be leveraged in ways that destabilize institutions. Personal grief and tragedy can be amplified in the media, creating narratives that are part advocacy, part spectacle. Organizations like TPUSA, with expansive networks, high-profile donors, and initiatives such as the Professor Watchlist and Students for Trump, are uniquely vulnerable to reputational damage and internal discord. Kirk’s legacy of confrontation and spectacle created fertile ground for sensationalism, factionalism, and opportunistic interventions by groups such as the Groypers.

Toward Responsible Leadership

The feud offers a cautionary lesson for student-focused political organizations and higher education at large. While former insiders may provide valuable insight, amplification of unverified claims can destabilize leadership, undermine institutional credibility, and warp student engagement. Erika Kirk’s insistence on restraint, transparency, and fact-based discourse demonstrates the importance of ethical leadership, media literacy, and principled decision-making in sustaining credible campus organizations.

Entangled Worlds as Spectacle  

The conflict between Candace Owens and Erika Kirk is more than a personal dispute. It reflects the entangled worlds of media influence, ideological factionalism, and institutional accountability in higher education. For observers, the episode offers a vivid study of how grief, ideology, and spectacle collide, and how effective leadership must navigate these pressures with clarity, ethical judgment, and a steady commitment to institutional integrity.

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Sources

Candace Owens – Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candace_Owens

Owens vs. Erika Kirk, AOL News: https://www.aol.com/news/candace-owens-strangely-accuses-erika-154928626.html

Erika Kirk public statements, WABC Radio: https://wabcradio.com/2025/12/11/erika-kirk-snaps-back-at-candace-owens

Megyn Kelly mediation reports, AOL: https://www.aol.com/articles/megyn-kelly-reveals-she-helped-220748120.html

Charlie Kirk career and assassination, UPI: https://www.upi.com/Voices/2025/09/11/charlie-kirk-activist-fatal-shooting/5321757598392

Conflict-driven persona, Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/10/charlie-kirk-dead/

Campus engagement and media amplification, PBS: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/charlie-kirk-dead-at-31-trump-says

Charlie Kirk’s statements on race and West Point, Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/13/charlie-kirk-turning-point-politics-debates

Professor Watchlist – Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Point_USA

Students for Trump acquisition, Charlie Kirk – Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk

Groypers intervention, Nick Fuentes – Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Fuentes