End of an Era

For now, we have suspended our three decade long run of citizen journalism and will let you know where we go from here.  Two of our other publications, American Injustice and street sociologist are also closed, but remain online for now on Blogger. 

Our Anti-SLAPP lawsuit (Chip Paucek and Pro Athlete Community v Dahn Shaulis) is pending. While the legal bill is enormous, we expect to win. In the meantime, please support independent voices like Democracy Now!, Richard Wolff, Robert A. Pape, Julie K. Brown, Roger Sollenberger, and Troy Barile. 

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Use the search tools and click on these hashtags for more information from our archives.  

#1stAmendment #2U #accountability #addiction #adjunct #AFT #AI #AImeltdown #alcoholism #algo #algorithm #alienation #Ambow #anomie #anti-intellectual #anxiety #Apollo #austerity #BariWeiss 

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#collegemeltdown #collegetown #covid #credentialism #crypto #CTE #debtcollective #democracy #deportation 

#dissent #DOD #DOGE #divest #doomloop #edtech #edugrift #enshittification #Epstein #epsteinfiles #FAFSA #fascism #FOXnews #freespeech #genocide #Gini #greed #Harvard  #HBCU #Hegseth #HHS #history #ICE #IDR #immigration #incel #India #inequality #Iran #jobless #kleptocracy #labor #leadgen #LibertyUniversity #LibertyUniversityOnline #medugrift #militarization #MIT #moralcapital #Musk 

#myth 

#NASA #NCAA #NDA #NSF #neoliberal #nihilism #nokings #nonviolence #Palantir #Palestine #pandemic #porn #Princeton 

#Pritzger #protest #PSLF #PXED #QOL #rehumanization 

#resistance #Risepoint #robocollege #robostudent #roboworker #Russia #sophistry 

#solidarity #Stanford #strikedebt #surveillance #tech #techbros #temperance #thiel #tiktok #TPUSA #transparency #Trump 

#UATX #UAW #umich #underemployment #USC #VA #value 

#veritas #virtue #Vistria #wikipedia #Yale

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   Higher Education and Class Sorting. Image by Glen McGhee

On our last full day of operation, we extend our deepest gratitude to the many courageous voices who have contributed to the Higher Education Inquirer over the years. Through research, reporting, whistleblowing, analysis, and public service, you have exposed inequities, challenged powerful interests, and helped the public understand the realities of higher education. Together, you form a resilient network of knowledge, courage, and public service, showing that collective insight can illuminate even the most entrenched systems. Your dedication has been, and continues to be, invaluable.

Special thanks to:
Bryan Alexander (Future Trends Forum), J. J. Anselmi (author), Devarian Baldwin (Trinity College),  Lisa Bannon (Wall Street Journal), Joe Berry (Higher Education Labor United), Kate Bronfenbrenner (Cornell), Stephen Burd (New America), Ann Bowers (Debt Collective), James Michael Brodie (Black and Gold Project Foundation), Patrick Campbell (Vets Ed Brief), Richard Cannon (activist), Kirk Carapezza (WGBH), Kevin L. Clay (Rutgers), Randall Collins (UPenn), Marianne Dissard (activist), Cory Doctorow, William Domhoff (UC Santa Cruz), Ruxandra Dumitriu, Keil Dumsch, Garrett Fitzgerald (College Recon), Glen Ford (with the ancestors), Richard Fossey (Condemned to Debt), Erica Gallagher (2U Whistleblower), Cliff Gibson III (Gibson & Keith), Henry Giroux (McMaster University), Terri Givens (University of British Columbia), Aaron Glantz, Luke Goldstein (The Lever),  Nathan Grawe (Carleton College), Michael Green (UNLV), Michael Hainline (Restore the GI Bill for Veterans), Debra Hale Shelton (Arkansas Times), Stephanie M. Hall (Protect Borrowers),  David Halperin (Republic Report), Bill Harrington (Croatan Institute), Phil Hill (On EdTech), Investor X (business insider), Robert Jensen (UT Austin), Seth Kahn (WCUP), Hank Kalet (Rutgers), Ben Kaufman (Protect Borrowers), Robert Kelchen (University of Tennessee), Karen Kelsky (The Professor Is In), Neil Kraus (UWRF), LACCD Whistleblower, Michelle Lee (whistleblower), Wendy Lynne Lee (Bloomsburg University of PA), Emmanuel Legeard (whistleblower), Adam Looney (University of Utah), Alec MacGillis (ProPublica), Jon Marcus (Hechinger Report), Steven Mintz (University of Texas), John D. Murphy (Mission Forsaken), Annelise Orleck (Dartmouth), Margaret Kimberly (Black Agenda Report), Austin Longhorn (UT student loan debt whistleblower), Richard Pollock (journalist), Debbi Potts (whistleblower), Jack Metzger (Roosevelt University), Derek Newton (The Cheat Sheet), Jeff Pooley (Annenberg Center), Fahmi Quadir (Safkhet Capital), Chris Quintana (USA Today), Jennifer Reed (University of Akron), Kevin Richert (Idaho Education News), Gary Roth (Rutgers-Newark), Mark Salisbury (TuitionFit), Stephanie Saul (NY Times), Christopher Serbagi (Serbagi Law), Alex Shebanow  (Fail State), Bob Shireman (TCF), Bill Skimmyhorn (William & Mary), Peter Simi (Chapman University), Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (Yale), Gary Stocker (College Viability), Strelnikov (Wikipedia Sucks), Taylor Swaak (Chronicle of Higher Education), Theresa Sweet (Sweet v Cardona), Harry Targ (Purdue University), Moe Tkacik (American Prospect),  Kim Tran (activist), Mark Twain Jr. (business insider), Michael Vasquez (The Tributary), Marina Vujnovic (Monmouth), Richard Wolff (Economic Update), David Whitman, Todd Wolfson (Rutgers, AFT), Helena Worthen (Higher Ed Labor United), DW (South American Correspondent), Heidi Weber (Whistleblower Revolution), Michael Yates (Monthly Review), government officials who have supported transparency and accountability, and the countless other educators, researchers, whistleblowers, advocates, and public servants whose work strengthens our understanding of higher education.

Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee

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

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

Permanent War and the Moral Abdication of Leadership

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

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

Climate Collapse and the Silence of Those Who Know Better

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

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

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

The Suppression of Student Protest and the Fear of Moral Clarity

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

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

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

Mass Surveillance and the Bureaucratization of Fear

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

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

Inequality and the Insulation of Elites from Consequence

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

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

Social Media, AI, and the Automation of Moral Evasion

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

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

The Crisis Beneath the Crisis

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

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

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

Toward Moral Courage and Rehumanization

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

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

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

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

Higher Education Inquirer Resources, Spring 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cottom, Tressie McMillan (2016). Lower Ed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

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

 College Choice and Career Planning Tools

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

Innovation and Reform

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

Higher Education Policy

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

Data Sources

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

Trade publications

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

The Poisoning of the American Mind

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

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

Foreign Influence as Cognitive Warfare

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

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

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

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

The Role of Global Tech Elites

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

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

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

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

Higher Education’s Failure of Defense

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

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

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

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

A Domestic Willingness to Be Deceived

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

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

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

The Long-Term Consequences

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

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

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

Toward Intellectual Self-Defense

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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