Medugrift and the price makers in higher education

In the United States, the cost of higher education is not a natural phenomenon. It is deliberately constructed by a network of institutional actors who function as price makers: university presidents, chief financial officers, boards of trustees, governors, and state legislators. They determine what students pay, how institutions are structured, and whose interests higher education ultimately serves. Their decisions shape tuition, labor conditions, program priorities, and the balance between education and the expanding world of medugrift—the hybrid system where medicine, education, debt, and corporate extraction intersect.

For decades, the American public has been told that tuition rises because education is inherently expensive. But as Richard Wolff argues in his critiques of the “War on the Working Class,” the economic decisions shaping tuition, labor costs, athletics, administrative growth, and capital projects reflect class priorities. The price makers choose which costs are fundamental and which are negotiable. They choose what gets built, who gets hired, and how much debt institutions take on. They choose who pays.

University presidents now act more like corporate executives than academic leaders. They negotiate seven-figure salaries, travel globally for fundraising, and preside over campuses where luxury construction often outruns academic needs. They approve budgets that elevate branding and athletics while pressuring academic departments to justify their existence through profit metrics. Tuition increases rarely slow presidential compensation; instead, they are framed as regrettable necessities dictated by “the market” or “competitive realities.”

CFOs enforce a financial logic that prioritizes credit ratings, cash reserves, and debt-financed expansion. They present budgets as neutral, but each line reflects a hierarchy of value. Instruction is cast as a cost center. Staff health care, faculty benefits, and student services become “inefficiencies.” Meanwhile, massive expenditures on consultants, real estate, information systems, and administration are justified as essential to “modernization.” The result is predictable: the people who teach and learn bear the burden while those who administer expand.

Trustees represent another layer of price making. Often drawn from banking, private equity, real estate, biotech, and corporate medicine, trustees bring a worldview shaped by capital accumulation rather than public service. They authorize tuition hikes, approve investment strategies, and greenlight partnerships that blend public education with private profit. Many trustees sit simultaneously on hospital boards or medical investment firms, allowing medugrift to flourish in the shadows of institutional legitimacy. Their decisions shape which programs expand, which shrink, and which students are offered genuine opportunity.

State governors and legislators are external architects of scarcity. Since the 1980s, state governments have systematically defunded public higher education while channeling resources to mass incarceration, gambling revenue schemes, corporate tax breaks, and subsidies to companies like Amazon. These choices undermine the ability of public institutions to remain affordable and force them to operate increasingly like private universities. The shift from public funding to tuition revenue is not inevitable; it is a political strategy. HBCUs and tribal colleges have lived with this manufactured scarcity for generations. Their chronic underfunding—documented in numerous state audits and federal investigations—illustrates what happens when government treats education for marginalized communities as optional.

The emergence of medugrift reveals a deeper structural problem. At the intersection of higher education and corporate medicine sits an engine of extraction. University medical systems leverage public funding, student tuition, and philanthropic contributions to build financial empires that often serve administrators first and communities last. Medical schools charge extreme tuition while placing students into debt-heavy paths. University hospitals consolidate regional health systems, increasing costs while reducing access. Research produced through public dollars is routinely captured by private pharmaceutical or biotech companies. Meanwhile, residents and faculty in these health systems often endure poor working conditions and stagnant pay. Medugrift conceals itself behind the prestige of medicine, but its logic mirrors that of predatory education: privatize gains, socialize losses, and extract from those with the least bargaining power.

Who determines the costs to students? The answer lies in the aggregated decisions of these actors. When a university raises tuition to protect its bond rating, that is a decision. When trustees invest in athletics while cutting humanities programs, that is a decision. When governors choose prisons over scholarships, that is a decision. When state legislatures allow gambling revenue to substitute for stable taxation, that is a decision. Each choice shifts the financial burden downward while consolidating power upward.

This is not simply mismanagement; it is a class project. The people who determine prices do not feel them. Students, families, adjunct instructors, and underfunded communities do. For working-class students, particularly those from historically excluded backgrounds, the price makers have built a system defined by debt, precarity, and limited mobility.

Nothing about this system is inevitable. There was a time when public universities were affordable, when trustees included community members and labor leaders, when presidents were educators, and when medical centers served the public rather than corporate conglomerates. If the price makers can build this system, a more democratic and humane system can be built to replace it.

The question for the coming decade is not whether higher education is too expensive. The public has already reached its verdict. The question is whether students, workers, and communities will continue to let the price makers—and the medugrift machinery attached to them—define who gets educated, who gets indebted, and who gets left behind.

Sources
Richard D. Wolff, Understanding Socialism; Capitalism Hits the Fan
Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness
Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid
Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul
State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) Reports
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, HBCU Funding Analyses

Erika Kirk’s Advice on Motherhood Raises Questions About Liberty University’s Online Degrees and Conservative Messaging

Erika Kirk, widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, has become the center of a storm after advising young women not to delay motherhood in pursuit of career ambitions. Her comments, made on The Megyn Kelly Show, were framed as a warning against prioritizing education or professional advancement over family. Yet Kirk herself pursued multiple degrees—including a Juris Master from Liberty University’s online program—before stepping into her current role as CEO of Turning Point USA.

The controversy exposes a deeper tension between higher education, conservative cultural messaging, and the lived experiences of public figures. Liberty University, where Kirk earned her advanced degree, has built one of the largest online education platforms in the country. It markets these programs as rigorous, flexible, and empowering for working adults, particularly women who balance professional and family responsibilities. Kirk’s own enrollment and completion of the program demonstrate the value of such opportunities. But her public advice now discourages younger women from following a similar path, raising questions about whether her message undermines the very educational model she benefited from.

Critics argue that Kirk’s remarks reflect a broader pattern in conservative circles: leaders who leverage higher education and professional networks to build influence, while prescribing traditional gender roles to the broader public. This double standard is particularly visible in faith-based institutions like Liberty, which promote academic achievement while simultaneously reinforcing cultural narratives that prioritize early marriage and motherhood. The contradiction is stark—Kirk’s advanced degree bolstered her credibility, yet she now suggests that women should subordinate similar ambitions to family life.

For higher education observers, the issue is not simply Kirk’s personal hypocrisy but the institutional dynamics at play. Liberty University profits from the demand for online graduate education, especially among women seeking advancement. At the same time, its alumni and affiliated figures often promote messages that diminish the importance of those very opportunities. This tension raises critical questions: How does Liberty reconcile its role as a provider of advanced education with the cultural messaging of its graduates? Does the institution benefit from women’s enrollment while tolerating rhetoric that discourages others from pursuing the same path?

The Erika Kirk controversy is more than a cultural flashpoint. It is a case study in how higher education intersects with politics, religion, and gender expectations. It highlights the contradictions between institutional marketing and alumni messaging, and it underscores the need for scrutiny of how universities—especially those with strong ideological identities—shape and are shaped by the public figures they produce.

Sources:

• Yahoo News – Erika Kirk Under Fire Over Pregnancy Remark

• MSN – Erika Kirk Dubbed a Hypocrite Over Pregnancy Advice

• AOL – Erika Kirk Tells Megyn Kelly She Prayed She Was Pregnant

• Mediaite – Erika Kirk Reveals She Was Praying to God She Was Pregnant

• Factually – Erika Kirk’s Education Background

The Mis-education of Global Elites

For generations, global elites have been positioned—socially, politically, financially—as the people best equipped to shape a better world. They have had the resources to eliminate poverty, curb climate catastrophe, restrain war, expand healthcare, reform universities, and make democratic participation meaningful. Instead, the world they have built is defined by widening inequality, ecological collapse, and a global crisis of legitimacy. Their failure is not accidental. It is the product of a profound mis-education: a system that trains elites not in stewardship or solidarity, but in domination, extraction, and self-preservation.

Across the United States, the U.K., Europe, and increasingly the Gulf States and East Asia, elite education has become a finishing school for rulers rather than a training ground for genuine public servants. These institutions—rich in endowment, selective in admission, steeped in prestige—construct worldviews that normalize inequity as efficiency, privatization as innovation, and austerity as necessity. Instead of interrogating the historical and structural forces that produce suffering, elite curricula often neutralize them, reducing political economy to management science and social justice to branding.

This mis-education manifests in global leadership failures. The same graduates who enter parliaments, presidential cabinets, central banks, multinational boards, and international NGOs routinely oversee policies that accelerate inequality and erode the public sphere. Many come from universities with unparalleled research capacity and moral rhetoric, yet preside over housing crises, medical debt catastrophes, and planetary degradation. They authorize wars but rarely experience them. They tout meritocracy while gatekeeping opportunity. They celebrate entrepreneurship while dismantling public goods. Their philanthropic initiatives—often built from profits derived through tax avoidance, monopolization, and labor exploitation—give the appearance of benevolence without altering the underlying systems of harm.

Carter G. Woodson’s warning in The Mis-education of the Negro echoes eerily here: “When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.” Global elites, educated into a narrow ideology that glorifies markets and hierarchy, do not need to be coerced into maintaining destructive systems—they do so voluntarily, believing themselves enlightened.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the corporate education complex itself. Elite universities produce the analysts who rationalize austerity, the managers who coordinate privatization, the consultants who reengineer public institutions to mimic corporations, and the financiers who define the metrics of success. They also cultivate the ideological insulation that shields elites from accountability. When their policies trigger chaos, the explanation is never structural, only technical: markets corrected, externalities emerged, populists disrupted stability. The mis-education of elites ensures they cannot see failure as their own.

Global institutions—from the IMF and World Bank to the UN and WTO—have mirrored this mindset. Their leaders, mostly trained in the same corridors of prestige, have promoted development models that prioritize capital mobility over community well-being, and foreign investment over local sovereignty. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence that structural adjustment, privatized healthcare, or financialization intensify human suffering, the elite worldview persists. The inability—or unwillingness—to imagine alternative systems is not an intellectual deficiency but the logical outcome of an education designed to reproduce power, not challenge it.

Meanwhile, those most affected by global crises—workers, migrants, debtors, students, the poor—are told to adapt, innovate, or sacrifice. They are bombarded with entrepreneurial rhetoric and resilience talk while their material conditions worsen. Political leaders lament social fragmentation but continue to funnel wealth upward. University administrators speak of inclusion while expanding administrative hierarchies and outsourcing labor. Energy executives promise transitions while drilling new pipelines. Tech CEOs warn about misinformation while building the infrastructure that spreads it.

The result is a world where the legitimacy of elites is evaporating. From Santiago to Paris, Lagos to Minneapolis, Delhi to London, mass movements are demanding accountability from institutions that have proven incapable of self-reform. The global backlash against inequality, authoritarianism, and corporate hegemony is not a misunderstanding—it is a recognition that the systems run by elites have failed.

If there is to be a better world, the mis-education of elites must be confronted directly. That means transforming the mission of universities from prestige accumulation to public purpose; replacing managerialism with democratic governance; centering histories of resistance rather than merely histories of empire; teaching economic justice instead of market worship; and training leaders who measure success not by shareholder value or rankings but by human flourishing.

Elites have long claimed exclusive expertise in solving the world’s problems. They have had centuries—and trillions—to prove it. They have failed miserably. A new generation of thinkers, activists, workers, and communities is already building the alternatives. Whether global elites choose to learn from them—or continue along their well-worn path of extraction and denial—will determine the next century.

For now, the record is clear: the institutions that shaped the world’s most powerful people were never designed to create justice. And they haven’t.

---

Academic Sources

Baldwin, Davarian L. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. Bold Type Books, 2021.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Stanford University Press, 1996.
Giroux, Henry A. Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education. Haymarket Books, 2014.
Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Khan, Shamus Rahman. Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton University Press, 2011.
Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. Oxford University Press, 1956.
Mkandawire, Thandika. “Institutional Monocropping and Monotasking in Africa.” UNRISD, 2007.
Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press, 2020.
Saul, John Ralston. Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West. Free Press, 1992.
Sklair, Leslie. The Transnational Capitalist Class. Wiley-Blackwell, 2000.
Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited. W.W. Norton, 2017.
Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-education of the Negro. Associated Publishers, 1933.

What America’s Declining Happiness Means — and How Higher Education Fits In

A recent report has sounded an alarm: happiness in the United States is falling more sharply than in almost every other developed nation. According to coverage by CBS News, Americans increasingly report loneliness, deep political division, and diminished life satisfaction. While this trend is worrying in itself, a closer look shows that it’s not just a problem of individual melancholy — it reflects a broader weakening of social structures, civic trust, and community cohesion. Historically, these phenomena have been central to the nation’s sense of coherence; now, they may be eroding.

Historical Roots and the Social Capital Framework

To understand the scale of what’s happening, it helps to go back. Over two decades ago, Robert D. Putnam’s seminal Bowling Alone documented a dramatic decline in American “social capital” — the network of associations, civic participation, and interpersonal trust that undergirds a functioning democracy. Putnam traced declines in everything from civic organizations to informal social gatherings, arguing that this fraying of social infrastructure had profound consequences. 

Social capital theory provides a useful lens here: trust between citizens, engagement in local institutions, and time spent in shared civic life are not just feel‑good extras, but foundations for collective resilience.

Later empirical work has revisited these concerns. Weiss, Paxton, Velasco, and Ressler (2018) developed a newer measure of social capital and found evidence that the decline persists. Inequality also appears to play a role: as income gaps widen, interpersonal trust tends to decrease. In research published in Finance & Development, economists found that rising inequality explained a substantial portion of the decline in social trust in the United States.

More recently, political scientists have documented how perceived political polarization erodes social trust. In a nationally representative panel study, Amber Hye‑Yon Lee showed that when people believe their country is deeply divided, their trust in fellow citizens drops — even beyond partisan loyalties. Pew Research Center data further illustrate this generational shift: younger cohorts, raised in a more polarized and atomized society, report lower social trust than earlier generations. 

At the same time, the digital revolution hasn’t necessarily filled the gap. Sabatini and Sarracino (2014) found that while people are more active on social media, this does not compensate for lost in-person connection — and may even undermine trust. During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers observed increased remote communication, but also stronger political echo chambers: in a study of 41,000 Americans’ social networks, political homophily (interacting mostly with those who share one’s partisan identity) increased. 

Well-Being, Health, and Mortality

The decline in social trust and cohesion is not just a sociological problem — it is deeply linked to health. A growing body of epidemiological research ties subjective well‑being to longevity and mortality. For instance, a widely cited study by Lawrence, Rogers, and Wadsworth found that lower happiness is associated with higher all‑cause mortality risk in U.S. adults. In another longitudinal study, researchers followed more than 30,000 adults over 14 years and found that individuals with low life satisfaction lived, on average, 8–10 years less than those with high satisfaction — even after controlling for sociodemographic and behavioral variables. 

These findings suggest that declining happiness is not just a matter of mental distress or cultural malaise — it translates into concrete health inequities and life expectancy gaps.

Recent Trends and the Global Context

Over the past decade, the United States has slid in global happiness rankings, according to the World Happiness Report. Some analyses suggest that the U.S. now falls behind peer nations on measures of life evaluation, meaning that Americans are increasingly less satisfied with their lives in a broad, reflective sense. 

Meanwhile, epidemiological studies of happy life expectancy — the number of years people spend in a state of subjective well‑being — show that although well-being improved from 1970–2000, gains were uneven by race and gender. The recent reversal or stagnation in happiness is thus especially alarming in light of these prior gains.

The Role of Higher Education: Past, Present, and Potential Futures

Given this historical and empirical context, higher education institutions have a complex and potentially pivotal role in responding to declining well-being.

On one hand, universities could help rebuild social capital. Institutions of higher learning have unique capacity to foster cross-partisan civic engagement, to embed community-building in pedagogy, and to support students’ social and emotional development. By investing in mental health infrastructure, peer networks, and service-based learning, colleges could act as local laboratories for restoring trust and social cohesion.

Higher education also has a research function: universities can produce evidence about what strengthens well-being, what interventions mitigate loneliness or political fragmentation, and how different models of community engagement impact long-term health outcomes. Through partnerships with public policy institutions, universities can help translate these findings into programs that bolster social infrastructure outside campus walls.

However, higher education also runs risks. If institutions remain fragmented, politically polarized, or focused on prestige rather than public mission, they may contribute to social fragmentation rather than healing it. Elite universities, in particular, may be perceived as disconnected from broader communities, undermining trust rather than reinforcing it. In such a scenario, higher education may reproduce the very inequalities and isolation that are driving declining well‑being.

Moreover, without deliberate strategies, campus networks may reinforce echo chambers: social connections among students may mirror broader partisan divides, especially in environments where political homogeneity is common.

Health Equity Implications

The decline in American happiness intersects directly with issues of health equity. Lower well-being and eroded trust disproportionately affect marginalized communities — those with fewer economic resources, less social support, and weaker civic infrastructure. When universities take an active role in promoting well-being and rebuilding social capital, they not only support individual students but may contribute to reducing structural health disparities.

Conversely, if higher education plays a passive role, or if access to supportive, socially rich campus environments is limited to privileged groups, the decline in happiness may deepen existing inequities. The gap in life expectancy tied to subjective well-being suggests that we cannot ignore the social determinants of happiness: economic inequality, community fragmentation, political polarization, and institutional trust all matter.

A Call to Action

To address this crisis, higher education leaders, policymakers, and public health practitioners should consider the following:

1. Reinforce community-building: Colleges should invest in programs that promote cross-group interaction, civic participation, and social trust.

2. Prioritize mental health: Expand counseling, peer support, and proactive well-being initiatives, especially for students who might otherwise fall through the cracks.

3. Align research with public value: Fund and promote research on social cohesion, well-being interventions, and the relationship between trust and health, and ensure that findings inform public policy.

4. Foster institutional humility and outreach: Universities should engage with local communities, not as isolated centers of prestige, but as partners in building social infrastructure and resilience.

5. Measure what matters: Beyond graduation rates and research output, institutions should track well-being metrics — social trust, belonging, mental health — as central indicators of their impact.

---

It Doesn't Have to Be This Bad 

The decline in happiness across the United States is not a passing phase or a matter of individual pathology. Rather, it reflects deep shifts in social trust, political cohesion, and community infrastructure. Historically, scholars like Putnam sounded the alarm on social capital’s erosion. Today, health researchers warn that falling well‑being shortens lives and exacerbates inequalities.

Higher education, if reoriented toward building connections, purpose, and trust, could play a vital role in reversing this trajectory. But if universities remain inward-looking or inequality-driven, they risk accelerating the very forces that undermine societal well-being. The stakes are high — not only for individual students, but for the future health and cohesion of the nation.

---

Scholarly Sources:

• Lee, Amber H. Y. “Social Trust in Polarized Times: How Perceptions of Political Polarization Affect Americans’ Trust in Each Other.” Political Behavior, 2022. PMC

• Weiss, Inbar, Pamela Paxton, Kristopher Velasco, and Robert W. Ressler. “Revisiting Declines in Social Capital: Evidence from a New Measure.” Social Indicators Research, 2018. PMC

• Lawrence, Elizabeth M., Richard G. Rogers, and Tim Wadsworth. “Happiness and Longevity in the United States.” Social Science & Medicine, 2015. PMC

• Study on life satisfaction and mortality (14-year follow-up): PMC

• Research on income inequality and trust: “In Equality, We Trust” (IMF / Finance & Development) IMF

• Study of happy life expectancy, 1970–2000: PMC

• Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. (on social capital history) Wikipedia+1

The Link Between Greed and Efficiency

In the mythology of American capitalism, “efficiency” is the magic word that justifies austerity for workers, rising tuition for students, and ever-expanding wealth for administrators, financiers, and institutional elites. It is framed as neutral, technocratic, and rational. In reality, efficiency in higher education has become inseparable from greed, functioning as a mask for extraction and consolidation.

Universities and their sprawling medical centers have become some of the largest landowners and employers in the cities they inhabit. As Devarian Baldwin has shown, these institutions operate as urban empires, expanding aggressively into surrounding neighborhoods, raising housing costs, displacing long-time residents, and reshaping cities to suit institutional priorities. University medical centers, nominally nonprofit, consolidate smaller hospitals, close services deemed unprofitable, and charge some of the highest healthcare prices in the nation. These operations are justified as efficiency or economic development, yet they often destabilize the communities they claim to serve.

Endowments, some exceeding fifty billion dollars at elite institutions, have become central to this dynamic. Managed like hedge funds, these pools of capital are heavily invested in private equity, venture capital, real estate, and derivatives. The financial logic of endowment management now shapes university priorities, shifting focus from public service and learning to capital accumulation, investor returns, and risk management. Efficiency is defined not by educational outcomes but by the growth of financial assets.

This culture of extraction has been amplified by decades of government austerity. Public funding for higher education has steadily declined since the 1980s, forcing institutions to behave like corporations. At the same time, the aging Baby Boomer generation is creating unprecedented financial pressures on Social Security, Medicare, and healthcare systems, leaving public coffers stretched thin and reinforcing a winner-take-all national mentality. In this environment, universities compete fiercely for students, research dollars, donors, and prestige, producing conditions ripe for exploitation.

Outsourcing has become a standard method to achieve “efficiency.” Universities frequently contract out food service, custodial work, IT, housing management, and security. Workers employed by these contractors often face lower wages, fewer benefits, and higher turnover, while administrators present these arrangements as cost-saving measures. Meanwhile, administrative layers within institutions continue to expand, creating a managerial class that oversees growth and strategy while teaching budgets shrink. As Marc Bousquet has argued, the corporate-style management model displaces faculty governance and treats students and staff as revenue streams rather than participants in a shared educational mission.

The adjunctification of the faculty exemplifies efficiency as exploitation. Contingent instructors now teach the majority of classes in American higher education, earning poverty-level wages without benefits while juggling multiple teaching sites. Institutions call this “flexibility” and “cost containment,” but in reality it transfers value from instruction to administrative overhead, athletics, real estate, and financial operations, all while reducing the quality of education and undermining academic continuity.

The rise of Online Program Managers, or OPMs, further illustrates the fusion of greed and efficiency. These companies design, manage, and market entire online degree programs, often taking forty to seventy percent of tuition revenue. While presented as efficiency partners, OPMs aggressively recruit students, inflate costs, and minimize academic oversight. Their business model mirrors the exploitative strategies of for-profit colleges, which pioneered high-cost, low-quality instruction combined with heavy marketing to capture federal loan dollars. The collapse of chains such as Corinthian, ITT, and EDMC left millions of borrowers with debt and no degree, yet the model persists inside nonprofit universities through OPMs and algorithm-driven online programs.

“Robocolleges” represent the latest evolution of this trend. AI-driven instruction, predictive analytics, automated grading, and digital tutoring promise unprecedented efficiency, but they often replace human educators, reduce pedagogical oversight, exploit student data, and prioritize enrollment growth over educational quality. Efficiency here serves the financial bottom line rather than the learning or well-being of students.

The result of these extractive practices is a national crisis of student debt, now exceeding one trillion dollars. Students borrow to cover skyrocketing tuition, outsourced services, underpaid instruction, and the costs of programs shaped by OPMs or automated platforms. Debt is not an accident of the system; it is the intended outcome, a mechanism for transferring public resources and student labor into private profit.

The broader social context intensifies the problem. Higher education exists in a winner-take-all, financialized society, where resources flow upward and the majority of people are told to compete harder, work longer, and borrow more. Universities have internalized this ideology, acting as both symbols and engines of extraction. Efficiency, under this paradigm, is defined not by the effectiveness of teaching or research but by the expansion of institutional power, wealth, and influence.

True efficiency would look very different. It would invest in educators rather than contractors, stabilize academic labor rather than exploit it, serve surrounding communities rather than displace them, expand learning opportunities rather than debt, and prioritize democratic governance over corporate-style hierarchy. Efficiency should measure how well institutions serve the public good, not how well they protect endowment returns, OPM profits, or administrative salaries.

Until such a redefinition occurs, efficiency will remain one of the most powerful tools of extraction in American higher education, a rhetorical justification for greed disguised as rational management.

---

Sources

Devarian Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower
Marc Bousquet, How the University Works
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed
Christopher Newfield, The Great Mistake
Sara Goldrick-Rab, Paying the Price
Government reports on for-profit colleges, student debt, and OPMs
Research on higher education financialization, outsourcing, and austerity policies

Same Predators, New Logo: PXED — A $22 Billion Student‑Debt Gamble Investors Should Beware

Warning to Investors: Phoenix Education Partners (PXED) may present itself as a cutting‑edge solution in career-focused higher education, but it’s built on the same extractive infrastructure that powered the University of Phoenix. With nearly a million students still owing an estimated $22 billion in federal loans, backing PXED isn’t just a financial bet — it’s a moral and reputational risk.

PXED’s leadership includes powerful private-equity players: Martin H. Nesbitt (Co‑CEO of Vistria, PXED trustee, and friend of Barak Obama), Adnan Nisar (Vistria), and Theodore Kwon and Itai Wallach (Apollo Global Management). Also in the mix is Chris Lynne, PXED’s president and a former Phoenix CFO intimately familiar with UOP’s controversial enrollment and marketing strategies. These are not educational reformers — they are dealmakers aiming to extract value from a student-debt pipeline.

[Image: Power Player Marty Nesbitt]

Higher Education Inquirer’s College Meltdown Index highlights how PXED fits into a broader financialization of higher education. Rather than reforming the University of Phoenix, its backers have resurrected it under a new brand — one that continues to enroll vulnerable adult learners, harvest federal aid, and operate with considerably less public oversight. 

Whistleblowers previously documented that Phoenix pressured recruitment staff to falsify student credentials, enrolling people who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for federal aid. Courses were allegedly kept deliberately easy — not to teach, but to keep students “active” enough to trigger aid disbursements. Internal marketing also exaggerated job prospects and corporate partnerships (e.g., with Microsoft and AT&T) to entice students. 

PXED may lean on a three‑year default rate (often cited around 12–13%), but that number is deeply misleading. Many UOP students stay stuck in deferment, forbearance, or income-driven repayment, masking the real long-term risk of non-payment. This is not just a short-term liability — it’s a potentially massive, multiyear financial exposure for PXED’s backers.

There was a significant FTC settlement that canceled $141 million in student debt and refunded $50 million to some students. But the scale of harm far exceeds that payout. Untold numbers of borrowers still have unresolved Borrower Defense claims, and the reputational risk remains profound.

Beyond financial concerns, there’s a major ethical dimension. HEI’s Divestment from Predatory Education argument makes a compelling case that investing in companies like PXED — or in loan servicers that profit from student debt — is not just risky, but morally indefensible. According to HEI, institutional investors (including university endowments, pension funds, and foundations) are complicit in a system that monetizes students’ aspirations and perpetuates financial harm. 

For investors, the message is clear: Phoenix is not merely an education play — it’s a high-stakes, ethically fraught extraction machine built on a legacy of indebtedness and regulatory vulnerability.

Unless PXED commits to real transparency, independent reporting on student outcomes, and accountability mechanisms — including reparations or debt relief — it should be approached not as a social-growth story, but as a dangerous gamble.

---

Sources

• HEI. “Divestment from Predatory Education Stocks: A Moral Imperative.” Higher Education Inquirer

• HEI. “The College Meltdown Index: Profiting from the Wreckage of American Higher Education.” Higher Education Inquirer

• HEI. “What Do the University of Phoenix and Risepoint Have in Common? The Answer Is a Compelling Story of Greed and Politics.” Higher Education Inquirer

• HEI. “University of Phoenix Uses ‘Sandwich Moms’ to Sell a Debt Trap.” Higher Education Inquirer

• HEI. “New Data Show Nearly a Million University of Phoenix Debtors Owe $21.6 Billion.” Higher Education

Defenders of the Higher Ed Business: How Lawyers Shield a Broken Industry

In the long decline of American higher education, a certain class of professionals has quietly prospered—lawyers who specialize in defending institutions from the consequences of their own behavior. These attorneys rarely appear in public debates over student debt, predatory recruitment, or collapsing regional colleges. Yet their fingerprints are everywhere: in courtroom strategies designed to run out the clock, in motions that narrow the rights of borrowers, in settlement agreements that mask wrongdoing without forcing structural reform. They are the legal custodians of an industry that has spent decades avoiding accountability.

These lawyers often frame their role as neutral, simply providing representation to clients who need it. But the nature of the representation matters. When institutions mislead students, inflate job-placement claims, push them into unaffordable debt, or fire whistleblowers who object to unethical practices, these firms defend the institution—not the student, not the truth, and certainly not the public interest. Litigation summaries and public communications frequently present a parallel universe in which colleges are the victims, regulators are overreaching meddlers, and students who seek restitution are opportunists or pawns of political forces.

The legal work is highly lucrative. In many cases, struggling institutions spend more on their attorneys than they do on direct student support. Colleges on the brink of closure still find six-figure retainers to fight state attorney general investigations or borrower defense claims. Public institutions use taxpayer dollars to shield themselves from transparency, all while students—particularly first-generation, low-income, and working-class students—absorb the losses. Attorneys in this sector are acutely aware of the harms their clients may have caused, yet their work consistently prioritizes institutional preservation over student restitution.

The history of this defense strategy is well documented. In 2011, federal courts began seeing cases from former students challenging institutions for misleading claims, untransferable credits, and failure to provide promised training. Courts often compelled arbitration, effectively removing class action rights and leaving individual students to pursue costly and complex proceedings alone. This pattern set a precedent: institutional defense relied on procedural tools rather than addressing substantive misconduct. Between 2012 and 2013, state supreme courts upheld arbitration clauses that stripped students of collective redress, signaling to institutions that strategic legal defenses could block accountability. Students’ claims of misrepresentation, fraud, and breaches of enrollment agreements were repeatedly forced into private arbitration. The courts emphasized procedural enforcement over consideration of the underlying harms, allowing institutions to continue operating without public scrutiny.

From 2015 to 2018, the Department of Education’s Inspector General documented widespread mismanagement of federal Title IV funds, showing that hundreds of millions in federal loans were issued to students at institutions that were later found to have misrepresented outcomes or violated federal regulations. Lawsuits brought by former students during this period, including allegations under the False Claims Act, were often dismissed or compelled to arbitration. Institutions were shielded, while borrowers were left with debt and limited recourse.

In 2018 and 2019, state attorneys general filed enforcement actions against multiple institutions for fraudulent recruitment practices and misrepresentation of accreditation status. In almost every case, institutions relied on their legal teams to secure procedural victories: dismissal of class action claims, enforcement of arbitration clauses, and delays in settlements. While regulators attempted to intervene, the structural power of corporate legal defense delayed, diluted, or obscured accountability. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2021, students sued institutions for failure to provide adequate online instruction and for abrupt changes in course delivery. Defense attorneys successfully argued that enrollment agreements allowed these operational changes, resulting in widespread dismissal of student claims. Again, institutional defense won the day while students absorbed the financial and educational consequences.

From 2022 to 2025, the Borrower Defense to Repayment program and the SAVE Plan promised relief for students harmed by mismanaged institutions. Yet litigation and regulatory challenges have slowed implementation. Institutions and their attorneys have repeatedly used procedural maneuvers to contest forgiveness, compel arbitration, or delay repayments, leaving thousands of students in limbo while debt accumulates. Throughout this period, legal strategy has consistently prioritized institutional survival over student restitution. Arbitration clauses, procedural dismissals, and regulatory delay have allowed colleges and universities to maintain access to federal funds, complete mergers, or restructure under bankruptcy protection, all while leaving harmed students with debt, disrupted education, and minimal legal recourse.

These attorneys also help shape the narratives consumed by policymakers, journalists, and college trustees. Public-facing summaries often downplay institutional misconduct and amplify court decisions that limit student rights. They rarely acknowledge the emotional and financial devastation suffered by borrowers or the systemic risks created when institutions know their lawyers can absorb most of the blow. Instead, they champion a legal environment that treats higher education primarily as a business subject to claims risk, not as a public trust.

Justice, in this ecosystem, becomes a matter of resources. Students and former employees face a wall of corporate legal expertise, while institutions with long records of abuse continue to operate behind settlements and sealed agreements. Attorneys who could use their considerable skills to protect the most vulnerable instead use them to reinforce a system that extracts value from students and leaves them to fend for themselves once the promises fall apart.

The Higher Education Inquirer has long documented the College Meltdown: the closures, the debt, the failed oversight, and the human cost. But the meltdown is not only a story about administrators, investors, or federal agencies. It is also a story about the lawyers who defend the indefensible and who help maintain a higher education marketplace where accountability is optional and harm is routine. They may sleep well, but only because the consequences of their work are borne by others.

The question is not how they sleep at night. The question is how many more students will lose before the legal strategies that protect institutions are no longer enough to protect the industry itself.

Sources:

U.S. Department of Education, Borrower Defense to Repayment decision data, 2022–2025

Government Accountability Office (GAO), “For-Profit Colleges: Student Outcomes and Federal Oversight,” 2021

Department of Education Office of Federal Student Aid, Borrower Defense decisions, 2020–2025

State Attorneys General filings and enforcement actions against higher education institutions, 2018–2023

U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General, audits and reports on Title IV program compliance, 2015–2022

GAO report on arbitration clauses in for-profit colleges, 2018

Finally Learned My Limits (Heidi Weber)

[Editors note: "No Stop" Heidi Weber has been a hero of ours for several years. Her courage fighting corruption at Globe University was documented on an episode of CBS Whistleblower.]

First, I would like to thank Dahn, and all the other truth tellers who work tirelessly every day and sacrifice so much to elevate truth. Without them, any whistleblower efforts would not have half the positive impact that they do.

For years, I really struggled with the title of whistleblower. I thought if I could distance myself from it, all the resulting traumas would just disappear, and life would be “normal” again.

However, I underestimated how much a landmark whistleblower case, especially in higher education, would affect and continually haunt me. I'm glad now, that it did, because it forced me to see how much of an impact it has had on an entire for-profit sector. I learned it's ok to allow myself to feel a sense of pride. After all, it was the most painful, stressful thing I imagined I'd ever go through.

Unfortunately, life didn't get that memo and still had lessons for me about the depth of pain adversity, and struggle, in ways that I never imagined.

In the middle of the pandemic, my husband’s sudden unexpected stroke forced us into a reality we weren’t prepared for. Overnight, I became his nurse, advocate, cheerleader, and his sole rehabilitation task master, simultaneously trying to maintain and hold our home together and make ends meet.

At the same time, our once close, beautiful, adult daughters estranged from us without explanation, treating us as if we do not exist, and are of no value to them... *

All I knew, was that it resulted in leaving a pain and heartache so profound that has reshaped the way I understand love, loss, and resilience.

In the midst of these personal storms, I rediscovered a purpose in educating and helping others as an advocate. So, I added two post graduate certificates and learned how to support and even the field for families who feel powerless in a biased system financially incentivized to separate families and little accountability or oversight.

Injustice and unfairness still stir a fire in me, just as it had when I made that fateful decision to become a whistleblower, and it still inspires me to be relentless in seeking truth and fairness.

Only now, I have the unique experience and knowledge to inspire/teach others.

Currently, I've been writing curricula and developing an online training program for a Certificate as a Justice Support Advocate. It focuses on some basic foundations of civics, (no longer taught in school), finding your own resilience and purpose, the various types of advocates, incorporating it into your personal and professional life, and protecting yourself and the public at the same time.

My wish is for learners to find their own fire and realize that courage is easier found when you are fighting for what you know is true and just for everyone, no matter what that is.

I've also been doing family advocacy consulting work, as an affordable option for parents, alone or as a partner to their attorney to provide non legal support, evaluation, investigation, and provide fair, logical solutions:

1. For parents facing or concerned about unethical practices in the Child Protective Services (CPS) system to audit, teach and ensure that parents are being portrayed truthfully with reasonable realistic goals to reunite the family, if indicated.

2. In high conflict custody, providing evaluation and screening for signs of parental alienation, and support, education, and resources (to both parents) on how to navigate being a divorced family, as well as providing recommendations to the Court (if indicated) centered around the best interests of the child and importance of both parents to healthy development.

If you would like to discuss either of those services or more info on the advocacy certificate course, please contact me at nostopheidi@gmail.com. I'm shooting for February or March 2026 to have the website, and course available online.

These years have been painful, transformative, and defining, but with pain comes growth and wisdom. Life still had more lessons…. to show me there is no limit to how much I can carry and keep positively moving forward.

*Adult children from “normal” average parents have become an almost celebrated (unhealthy) trend over the last ten years especially, for many adult children who have been influenced, poisoned, or alienated against one or both parents by undertrained therapists, peers, and social media influencers, allowing avoidance of responsibility, self-discipline, or concern for others.

The College Meltdown Index: Profiting from the Wreckage of American Higher Education

“Education, once defended as a public good, now functions as a vehicle for private gain.”

---

From Collapse to Contagion

The College Meltdown never truly ended—it evolved.

After a decade of spectacular for-profit implosions, the higher education sector has reconstituted itself around new instruments of profit: debt servicing, edtech speculation, and corporate “partnerships” that disguise privatization as innovation.

The College Meltdown Index—tracking a mix of education providers, servicers, and learning platforms—reveals a sector in quiet decay.

Legacy for-profits like National American University (NAUH) and Aspen Group (ASPU) trade at penny-stock levels, while Lincoln Educational (LINC) and Perdoceo (PRDO) stumble through cost-cutting cycles.

Even the supposed disruptors—Chegg (CHGG), Udemy (UDMY), and Coursera (COUR)—are faltering as user growth plateaus and AI reshapes their value proposition.

Meanwhile, SoFi (SOFI), Sallie Mae (SLM), and Maximus (MMS) thrive—not through learning, but through the management of debt.

---

The Meltdown Graveyard

Below lies a sampling of the education sector’s ghost tickers—the silent casualties of a system that turned public trust into private loss.

Symbol	Institution	Status	Approx. Closure/Delisting
CLAS.U	Class Technologies	Defunct	2024
INST	Instructure (pre-acquisition)	Acquired by Thoma Bravo	2020
TWOUQ	2U, Inc.	Bankrupt	2025
CPLA	Capella University	Merged with Strayer (Strategic Ed.)	2018
ESI-OLD	ITT Technical Institute	Defunct	2016
EDMC	Education Management Corporation	Defunct	2018
COCO-OLD	Corinthian Colleges	Defunct	2015
APOL	Apollo Education Group (U. of Phoenix)	Taken Private	2017

Each ticker represents not only a failed business model—but a generation of indebted students.

---

The Phoenix That Shouldn’t Have Risen

No institution better symbolizes this moral decay than the University of Phoenix and Phoenix Education Partners (PXED).

At its height, Phoenix enrolled nearly half a million students. By 2017, following federal investigations and mass defaults, Apollo Education Group—its parent company—collapsed under scrutiny.

But rather than disappearing, Phoenix was quietly resurrected through a private equity buyout led by Apollo Global Management, Vistria Group, and Najafi Companies.

Freed from public oversight, the university continued to enroll vulnerable adult learners, harvesting federal aid while shedding accountability.

In 2023, the University of Idaho’s proposed acquisition of Phoenix provoked national outrage, forcing state officials to confront a basic question: Should a public university absorb a for-profit brand built on exploitation?

The deal collapsed—but the temptation to monetize Phoenix’s infrastructure remains. In 2025, a small portion became publicly traded.  Its call centers and online systems remain models of enrollment efficiency, designed to extract just enough engagement to secure tuition payments.

---

From Education to Extraction

The sector’s transformation reveals a deeper moral hazard.

If students succeed, investors profit.
If students fail, federal subsidies and servicer contracts ensure the money keeps flowing.

Executives face no downside. Shareholders are protected. The losses fall on students and taxpayers.

In this sense, the “meltdown” is not a market failure—it’s a market design.

“The winners are those who most efficiently extract value from hope.”

Public universities increasingly partner with private Online Program Managers (OPMs), leasing their brands to companies that control marketing, pricing, and student data. The once-clear line between public and for-profit education has blurred beyond recognition.

---

The Quiet Winners of Collapse

A few companies continue to prosper by aligning with “practical” or “mission-safe” sectors:

• Adtalem (ATGE) in nursing and health education,

• Grand Canyon Education (LOPE) in faith-branded online degrees,

• Bright Horizons (BFAM) in corporate childcare and workforce training.

Yet all remain heavily dependent on public dollars and tax incentives. The state subsidizes their existence; the market collects the rewards.

Meanwhile, 2U’s bankruptcy leaves elite universities scrambling to explain how a publicly traded OPM, once championed as the future of online learning, could disintegrate overnight—taking with it a network of high-priced “nonprofit” certificate programs.

---

A Reckoning Deferred

The College Meltdown Index exposes a system that has internalized its own failures.
Fraud has been replaced by financial engineering, transparency by outsourcing, and accountability by spin.

The real collapse is not in the market—but in moral logic. Education, once the cornerstone of social mobility, has become a speculative instrument traded between hedge funds and holding companies.

Until policymakers—and universities themselves—confront the ethics of profit in higher education, the meltdown will persist, slowly consuming what remains of the public good.

---

“The real question is not whether the system will collapse, but who will rebuild it—and for whom.”

---

Sources:

• Higher Education Inquirer, College Meltdown 2.0 Index (Nov. 2025)

• SEC Filings (2010–2025)

• U.S. Department of Education, Heightened Cash Monitoring Reports

• An American Sickness – Elisabeth Rosenthal

• The Goosestep – Upton Sinclair

• Medical Apartheid – Harriet A. Washington

• Body and Soul – Alondra Nelson

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot

Muckraking and the Modern University

From the Gilded Age to the digital era, muckraking has served as a check on concentrated power. It has exposed exploitation in factories, corruption in government, racial terror, and corporate deceit. Today, that same spirit is urgently needed in higher education—an industry that has become both immensely wealthy and profoundly unequal.

---

Ida B. Wells and the Moral Foundation of Muckraking (1890s)

Modern investigative reporting begins with Ida B. Wells, who in the late 19th century documented the horrors of lynching and the complicity of institutions in perpetuating racial terror. In Southern Horrors (1892) and The Red Record (1895), Wells used data, testimony, and moral clarity to challenge both white supremacy and institutional silence.

Her courage established muckraking not just as journalism but as moral resistance—a template for confronting systemic injustice, whether in government, business, or education.

---

Thorstein Veblen and the Rise of the Business University (1918)

By the early 20th century, universities themselves had become powerful institutions. Thorstein Veblen, in The Higher Learning in America (1918), described how trustees, presidents, and donors increasingly treated scholarship as a commodity. The pursuit of truth was subordinated to the pursuit of prestige and profit. Veblen’s critique presaged the administrative bloat, branding culture, and market-driven priorities now standard in higher education.

---

Upton Sinclair and The Goosestep (1923)

Upton Sinclair, in The Goosestep: A Study of American Education (1923), argued that elite universities were “factories for the ruling class.” Trustees dictated policy, suppressed dissenting faculty, and produced graduates conditioned to serve wealth and power. Sinclair’s critique resonates a century later, as universities remain highly responsive to donors and financial interests rather than the public good.

---

Jessica Mitford and Corporate Exploitation (1960s)

Jessica Mitford, best known for The American Way of Death (1963), brought investigative rigor to industries that relied on secrecy, public trust, and consumer inattention. Her work exposed how profit motives could exploit vulnerability and regulatory gaps. Mitford’s methodology—meticulous documentation, ethical outrage, and clear writing—provides a model for exposing modern higher education practices that prioritize revenue over students’ welfare.

---

Digital Muckraking: OPMs and 2U (21st Century)

In the 21st century, online program managers (OPMs) like 2U, Inc. have commercialized education in new ways. Chip Paucek, co-founder and longtime CEO of 2U, built partnerships with elite universities offering certificates and degrees that were sometimes of questionable value, while profiting from revenue-sharing agreements.

When independent journalists examined these arrangements and their implications for students and adjunct labor, they sometimes faced threats of litigation. The ongoing Paucek v. Shaulis case (filed 2024, and still pending) illustrates the modern challenge: exposing systemic issues in higher education can trigger lawsuits designed to intimidate or silence critics.

---

The Chilling Effect of Legal Retaliation

Even unfounded lawsuits can suppress critical reporting. Independent journalists, adjuncts, and whistleblowers often lack the resources to defend themselves against legal pressure. This modern form of censorship echoes the intimidation faced by Wells, Sinclair, and Mitford in their respective eras.

Higher education, increasingly operated like a business, has become vulnerable to this kind of silencing. Public interest and accountability require journalists who are willing to persist despite the risks.

---

The Enduring Importance of Muckraking

From Wells’ moral courage, to Veblen’s economic critique, Sinclair’s exposé of elite conformity, and Mitford’s corporate investigations, muckrakers have shaped public understanding and accountability. Today, independent journalism is one of the few mechanisms capable of exposing predatory practices, financial manipulation, and labor exploitation in higher education.

As Wells wrote, “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” That light has always been costly—but without it, universities risk becoming oligarchies rather than public institutions.

---

Reclaiming the Public Good (If That's Possible) 

Muckraking is civic duty. It insists that higher education be judged not by prestige or endowment size, but by service to students and society. Independent journalists must continue the Wells–Veblen–Sinclair–Mitford tradition, confronting power, exposing exploitation, and demanding accountability.

---

Sources

• Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors (1892); The Red Record (1895)

• Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (1918)

• Upton Sinclair, The Goosestep: A Study of American Education (1923)

• Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death (1963)

• Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid (2006)

• Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness (2017)

• Higher Education Inquirer archives, 2014–2025

• Paucek v. Shaulis (filed October 2024, pending 2025)