Higher Education Inquirer : Search results for whistleblower

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Monday, August 25, 2025

HEI Resources Fall 2025

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

Books

Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.
Alexander, Bryan (2023). Universities on Fire. Johns Hopkins Press.
Angulo, A. (2016). Diploma Mills: How For-profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Apthekar, Bettina (1966) Big Business and the American University. New Outlook Publishers.
Apthekar, Bettina (1969). Higher education and the student rebellion in the United States, 1960-1969 : a bibliography.
Archibald, R. and Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America's Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.
Armstrong, E. and Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.
Arum, R. and Roksa, J. (2011). Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press.
Baldwin, Davarian (2021). In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. Bold Type Books.
Bennett, W. and Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education. Thomas Nelson.
Berg, I. (1970). "The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs." Praeger.
Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University. Princeton University Press.
Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.
Best, J. and Best, E. (2014) The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. Atkinson Family Foundation.

Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. Norton.

Bogue, E. Grady and Aper, Jeffrey. (2000). Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education: The Evolution of Philosophy and Policy.
Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace : The Commercialization of Higher Education. Princeton University Press.
Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation. NYU Press.
Brennan, J & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press.
Brint, S., & Karabel, J. The Diverted Dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900–1985. Oxford University Press. (1989).
Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024) Whiteness in the Ivory Tower: Why Don't We Notice the White Students Sitting Together in the Quad? Teachers College Press.
Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus: Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of "Post-Racial" Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.
Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Princeton University Press.
Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off?: A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You'll Ever Make. Public Affairs.
Cassuto, Leonard (2015). The Graduate School Mess. Harvard University Press.
Caterine, Christopher (2020). Leaving Academia. Princeton Press.
Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.
Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass: How America's Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission University of Chicago Press.
Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Collins, Randall. (1979/2019) The Credential Society. Academic Press. Columbia University Press.
Cottom, T. (2016). Lower Ed: How For-profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America
Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? 8th Edition. Routledge.
Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.
Dorn, Charles. (2017) For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America Cornell University Press.
Eaton, Charlie. (2022) Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education. University of Chicago Press.
Eisenmann, Linda. (2006) Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
Espenshade, T., Walton Radford, A.(2009). No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life. Princeton University Press.
Faragher, John Mack and Howe, Florence, ed. (1988). Women and Higher Education in American History. Norton.
Farber, Jerry (1972). The University of Tomorrowland. Pocket Books.
Freeman, Richard B. (1976). The Overeducated American. Academic Press.
Gaston, P. (2014). Higher Education Accreditation. Stylus.
Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why It Matters
Giroux, Henry (1983). Theory and Resistance in Education. Bergin and Garvey Press

Giroux, Henry (2022). Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance. Bloomsbury Academic

Gleason, Philip (1995). Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. Oxford U.
Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.
Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream.
Graeber, David (2018) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon and Schuster.

Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston. Harvard Press.

Hamilton, Laura T. and Kelly Nielson (2021) Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities
Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement
Keats, John (1965) The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.
Kelchen, Robert. (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kezar, A., DePaola, T, and Scott, D. The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. Johns Hopkins Press.
Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street: The Transformation of For-profit Higher Education
Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Crown.
Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. Harper Perennial.
Labaree, David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Labaree, David (1997) How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education, Yale University Press.
Lafer, Gordon (2004). The Job Training Charade. Cornell University Press.
Loehen, James (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me. The New Press.
Lohse, Andrew (2014). Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: A Memoir. Thomas Dunne Books.
Lucas, C.J. American higher education: A history. (1994).
Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Penguin Press.
Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.
Mandery, Evan (2022) . Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us. New Press.
Marti, Eduardo (2016). America's Broken Promise: Bridging the Community College Achievement Gap. Excelsior College Press.
Mettler, Suzanne 'Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. Basic Books. (2014)

From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University:

Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.
Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them.
Paulsen, M. and J.C. Smart (2001). The Finance of Higher Education: Theory, Research, Policy & Practice. Agathon Press.
Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing.
Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.
Roth, G. (2019) The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility. Pluto Press
Ruben, Julie. The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality. University Of Chicago Press. (1996).
Rudolph, F. (1991) The American College and University: A History.
Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.
Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students.
Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy. Cornell University Press.
Simpson, Christopher (1999). Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War. New Press.
Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education.
Stein, Sharon (2022). Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education, Johns Hopkins Press.
Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Harvard University Press.
Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture.
Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. The University of Chicago Press.
Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. Basic Books
Taylor, Barret J. and Brendan Cantwell (2019). Unequal Higher Education: Wealth, Status and Student Opportunity. Rutgers University Press.
Thelin, John R. (2019) A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy: Unionizing Adjunct Faculty in America. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld. Simon and Schuster.
Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much.
Veysey Lawrence R. (1965).The emergence of the American university.
Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education
Washington, Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor.
Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure: For-Profit Colleges and the Closing of the Conservative Mind. Cypress House.
Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities.
Winks, Robin (1996). Cloak and Gown:Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961. Yale University Press.
Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.
Zaloom, Caitlin (2019). Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost. Princeton University Press.
Zemsky, Robert, Susan Shaman, and Susan Campbell Baldridge (2020). The College Stress Test:Tracking Institutional Futures across a Crowded Market. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

College Choice and Career Planning Tools

Innovation and Reform

Higher Education Policy

Data Sources

Trade publications

Saturday, August 9, 2025

The Higher Education Inquirer: Investigating the Dark Corners of U.S. Higher Ed

For nearly a decade, the Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) has cultivated a reputation for relentless, independent journalism in a field often dominated by press-release rewrites and trade-conference boosterism. In 2024 and 2025, that commitment has been on full display, with a series of investigations that not only expose institutional negligence and corporate greed, but also demand structural change.

Following the Money: GI Bill Loopholes and Veteran Betrayal

One of HEI’s most impactful 2025 stories examined how billions in GI Bill funds—more than Pell Grants or state scholarships—are diverted to for-profit and low-performing nonprofit institutions. Despite promises of career advancement, many veterans end up underemployed and in debt. The reporting points to deliberate policy gaps, such as the weakened 90–10 rule, that incentivize predatory recruitment over educational quality.

Student Debt Transparency: A FOIA Offensive

HEI has also launched an ambitious Freedom of Information Act campaign to shed light on the federal student loan portfolio and on how rarely student loan debt is discharged through bankruptcy. Requests to the Department of Education seek data going back to 1965—records that could help quantify decades of policy drift away from borrower relief.

The FOIA strategy doesn’t stop at the Department of Education. HEI has queried the Securities and Exchange Commission for complaint data against online program managers 2U and Ambow Education, bringing corporate accountability into sharper focus.

Beyond the Campus: Immigration, Religion, and Geopolitics

While student debt remains a central concern, HEI has broadened its investigative reach. In March 2025, it filed a FOIA with the State Department for details on more than 300 revoked student visas, a move to illuminate opaque policies that can upend lives without public explanation.

Other pieces have examined the rise of Christian cybercharter schools, warning of a drift toward ideological indoctrination in taxpayer-funded education. Internationally, HEI has scrutinized the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s U.S. media tour, questioning the intersection of higher education, faith-based advocacy, and political agendas.

Why This Work Matters

What makes HEI’s journalism unique is its sustained follow-through. Many outlets publish a single exposé and move on. HEI revisits stories months or years later, tracking the real-world consequences of policy changes and institutional behavior. This persistence has helped keep public attention on issues like the Corinthian Colleges collapse and the broader failure to deliver promised student debt relief.

By pairing data-driven reporting with insider accounts and whistleblower input, HEI not only documents abuse but also lays out pathways for reform. In a higher education system where financialized logic often outweighs student welfare, that combination is increasingly rare—and increasingly necessary.

Sources:

Higher Education Inquirer
Higher Education Inquirer – GI Bill Reform
University Leadership Central
Student Affairs Connection

Monday, August 4, 2025

The Data We Can Still Trust: Holding Colleges Accountable When Transparency Declines

In an age where facts are contested and data manipulated, the question "Can we trust the numbers?" has become not just philosophical but political—and deeply consequential. Nowhere is this more evident than in higher education policy, where recent moves by the federal government have drastically undermined transparency, oversight, and public trust.

The dismantling of truth has reached new heights in 2025. Under the second Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Education has seen unprecedented budget cuts, including the near-evisceration of offices responsible for data collection and analysis. Key functions of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) have been gutted or quietly privatized, leaving researchers, journalists, and the public in the dark about the state of America's colleges and universities.

While much of the media has focused on the culture wars roiling campuses, the real war—against accountability—has played out more quietly through bureaucratic defunding and the removal of inconvenient truth-tellers.

In a stunning move this summer, President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), reportedly over the refusal to manipulate job figures and educational attainment data to suit administration talking points. The firing came just days after the BLS declined to revise downward the number of unemployed college graduates—a number that contradicted public claims of an “education-fueled economic boom.”

The Department of Labor's statistical integrity had been under increasing pressure in recent months. Sources within the agency described an atmosphere of intimidation and growing self-censorship. Internal memos revealed efforts to suppress long-term wage stagnation data and the underemployment rates among recent college grads.

Meanwhile, the Department of Education—once tasked with producing detailed reports on student outcomes, loan default rates, and institutional effectiveness—has abandoned major longitudinal studies. The College Scorecard website, once a marginal tool for transparency, now offers cherry-picked metrics and lacks any independent oversight. Public datasets are incomplete or years out of date. Critical tools like the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) are being quietly dismantled under the guise of "streamlining."

These changes don’t just affect policy wonks and higher ed insiders. They directly impact students, families, and communities trying to navigate a rapidly shifting and often predatory education marketplace. Without reliable data on debt loads, job placement, or graduation rates, how can anyone make informed decisions about college?

The answer, increasingly, is: they can’t. And perhaps that’s the point.

For an administration and its allies pushing voucher-style education reforms, expanded online programs, and reduced regulatory scrutiny, ignorance is a strategic asset. In a data vacuum, ideology prevails. Numbers become whatever those in power say they are.

This erosion of statistical integrity is part of a broader trend of de-democratizing knowledge. When facts become partisan tools and empirical research is defunded or delegitimized, the public loses its capacity to make informed decisions—not just about higher education, but about the future of the country itself.

The Higher Education Inquirer has long reported on the College Meltdown—the slow-motion unraveling of a bloated, debt-fueled, and increasingly corporatized higher ed system. But what happens when the meltdown is obscured by manipulated metrics and silenced dissent?

We are entering a phase where the collapse is not just structural or economic, but epistemological. Without reliable data, accountability vanishes. And when accountability dies, so does democracy.

The Numbers We Can Still Trust

Despite the chaos at the federal level, not all is lost. Gary Stocker, founder of College Viability and a long-time analyst of college financial health, emphasizes that historical data from IPEDS, audited financial statements, and IRS 990s remain largely intact—and still extremely valuable.

“There might be some risk for future numbers,” Stocker explains, “but I contend there is little risk for historical numbers from IPEDS, financial statements, and IRS 990s. Those numbers are baked in and would be very difficult to alter.”

This long-view perspective is critical in a time when many colleges and universities are trying to spin short-term narratives of recovery.

“If the enrollment trend is down over the past 8–10 years, that is the indicator of a college in trouble,” Stocker says. “Any college that tries to spin a 1-year, full enrollment recovery story will face extensive doubt and disbelief—especially from me.”

These longitudinal patterns—whether in enrollment, tuition discounting, administrative bloat, or student outcomes—are more important than ever. And while IPEDS may be on the chopping block, Stocker reminds us that nonprofit institutions are still legally obligated to submit audited financials and IRS 990 forms.

“Those two resources alone will be a tool with which to identify and expose those colleges willing to risk taking poetic license with their data.”

At The Higher Education Inquirer, we agree—and we thank Gary Stocker for his clarity and persistence. Transparency doesn’t depend solely on the federal government. It depends on those willing to dig, analyze, and expose the truth—even when that truth is buried in spreadsheets and footnotes.

We urge journalists, researchers, students, and faculty to continue examining the data that remains. The numbers don’t lie. But silence, distortion, and disappearance are forms of policy. And right now, those policies are accelerating.

Sources:

– U.S. Department of Education Budget Summary, FY2025
– Internal whistleblower reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
– “Bureau Head Fired Over Data Dispute,” Washington Post, June 2025
– American Council on Education analysis of NCES defunding, July 2025
– U.S. Department of Education, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS): https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/
– IRS Form 990 Search: https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/
– Gary Stocker, College Viability – https://collegeviability.com/
– Gary Stocker, Personal communication with The Higher Education Inquirer, August 2025
– Chronicle of Higher Education, “Enrollment Trends and Institutional Closures,” accessed 2025
– National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), “Tuition Discounting Study,” various years
– Higher Education Inquirer archives on data transparency and College Scorecard manipulation

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Time to Shut Off the Tap: The Case for Ending DoD Tuition Assistance to Predatory Colleges

On July 3, 2025, the Higher Education Inquirer received the latest response from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) regarding FOIA request 22-F-1203—our most recent effort in a nearly eight-year campaign to uncover how subprime and for-profit colleges have preyed on military servicemembers, veterans, and their families.

The response included confirmation that 1,420 pages of documents were located. But of those, 306 pages were withheld in full, and 1,114 were released only with heavy redactions. A few for-profit colleges—Trident University International, Grand Canyon University, DeVry University, and American Public University System (which includes American Military University and American Public University)—were specifically mentioned in the partially visible content.

And yet the larger truth remains hidden. The names of other institutions known to have exploited military-connected students—University of Phoenix, Colorado Technical University, American InterContinental University, Purdue University Global, and Liberty University Online, among others—were nowhere to be found in the documents we received. Their absence is conspicuous.

We have been pursuing the truth since December 2017, demanding records that would reveal how the DoD enabled these schools to thrive. We sought the list of the 50 worst-performing colleges receiving Tuition Assistance (TA) funds, based on data compiled under Executive Order 13607 during the Obama Administration. That list was never released. When the Trump Administration took power in 2017, they quietly abandoned the protective measures meant to hold these colleges accountable. Our FOIA request DOD OIG-2019-000702 was denied, with the Pentagon claiming that no such list existed. A second request in 2021 (21-F-0411) was also rejected. And now, more than three years after we filed our 2022 request, the DoD continues to deny the public full access to the truth.

The records we did receive are riddled with legal exemptions: internal deliberations, privacy claims, and most notably, references to 10 U.S.C. § 4021, a law that allows the DoD to withhold details of research transactions outside of traditional grants and contracts. In other words, the Pentagon has built legal firewalls around its relationships with for-profit education providers—and continues to shield bad actors from scrutiny.

But the complicity doesn’t end there. It extends deep into the institutional fabric of how the military interfaces with higher education.

Decades of Systemic Corruption

Since the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Defense has worked hand-in-glove with for-profit colleges through a nonprofit called the Council of College and Military Educators (CCME). What began in the 1970s as a noble initiative to expand access to education for military personnel was hijacked by predatory colleges—including the University of Phoenix—that used the organization as a lobbying front.

These schools infiltrated CCME events, using them to curry favor with military officials, often by hiring veterans as on-base sales agents and even providing alcohol to loosen up potential gatekeepers. While CCME publicly maintained the appearance of academic integrity and service, behind the scenes it served as a conduit for lobbying, influence, and enrollment schemes. Military education officers were schmoozed, manipulated, and in some cases, quietly co-opted. This is something you won’t find in CCME’s official history.

We have been told by multiple insiders that the partnership between DoD and these schools was not just tolerated but actively nurtured. Attempts at reform came and went. Investigations were buried. Promises to "do better" evaporated. No one was held accountable. No one went to jail. But the damage has been lasting—measured in ruined credit, wasted benefits, and lives derailed by fraudulent degrees and broken promises.

The Trump-Hegseth Department of Defense

And still, new scandals—except those uncovered by us—go largely unreported. The media has moved on. Congressional attention has shifted. And the same schools, or their rebranded successors, continue to operate freely, often under the protective shadow of military partnerships.

Today, the DoD continues to deny that the DODOIG-2019-000702 list of the 50 worst schools even exists. But we know otherwise. Based on VA data, whistleblower accounts, and independent reporting, we are confident that this list was compiled—and buried. The question is why. And the answer may very well lie in the unredacted names of institutions too politically connected or too legally protected to be exposed.

The Evidence Is Overwhelming

The most damning proof of institutional complicity remains publicly available. In GAO Report GAO-14-855, published in 2014, the Government Accountability Office detailed the deep flaws in DoD’s oversight of its Tuition Assistance program. The report highlighted inconsistent evaluations, unqualified contractor reviewers, vague standards, and incomplete data collection. The DoD had spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on schools without ensuring quality or protecting students. In response, DoD temporarily halted its school evaluations—then quietly resumed business as usual.

PwC audits from 2015 and 2018 confirmed widespread noncompliance with DoD’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Schools violated marketing guidelines, offered misleading transfer information, and failed to provide basic academic counseling. Few were sanctioned, and even fewer were removed from eligibility lists.

Gatehouse Strategies, in its 2022 report, reinforced these conclusions. It warned of “a lack of consistent enforcement mechanisms,” and found that even institutions under investigation continued to receive DoD TA funding. The system appeared designed not to punish misconduct, but to tolerate and obscure it.

The Cost of Inaction

Meanwhile, service members seeking education are left exposed. Many receive low-value credentials, accumulate debt, and waste their limited benefits at schools that offer little academic rigor and even less career mobility. When those credits don’t transfer—or worse, when degrees are rejected by employers—the burden falls squarely on the individual.

Institutions like American Public University System, University of Phoenix, Colorado Technical University, DeVry, and Purdue Global have collected tens of millions in DoD TA funding. Some are under state or federal investigation. Others have quietly changed ownership or rebranded. But the underlying model—targeting military students with high-volume, low-quality online programs—remains largely intact.

We Don’t Need Another Report

The time for reflection is over. The data from GAO, PwC, Gatehouse, and from our own FOIA investigations are clear. What remains is the political will to act.

The Department of Defense should immediately:

– Revoke TA eligibility for schools with documented abuse, federal scrutiny, or repeat MOU violations.
– Release the suppressed list of the worst-performing colleges, as identified under Executive Order 13607.
– Mandate transparent outcome reporting—including transferability, job placement, and default rates—for every school in the TA program.
– Sever ties with lobbyist conduits like CCME that have enabled predatory behavior for decades.

This is not just a matter of bureaucratic reform—it is about justice. For the servicemembers who were deceived. For the families who sacrificed. For the taxpayers who unknowingly foot the bill for failure.

The Higher Education Inquirer will not stop pushing for those names, those documents, and that accountability. Behind every redaction is a veteran who trusted the system—and got scammed. Behind every delay is another student targeted by the same exploitative machinery. Behind every refusal to act is a government more loyal to profit than to people.

Related Reading
GAO-14-855: DoD Education Benefits Oversight Lacking
Military Times (2018): DoD review finds 0% of schools following TA rules
Military Times (2019): Schools are struggling to meet TA rules, but DoD isn’t punishing them. Here’s why.

Friday, August 1, 2025

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

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

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

Most Viewed Stories in July 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Readers Want

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

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

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

Thursday, July 31, 2025

HEI and the Backstage of Higher Education

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) exists not to flatter the ivory tower, but to peer behind its stage curtains—into the backstage of higher education, where the hidden scripts are written and the illusions maintained.

For decades, mainstream media and college marketing machines have focused their attention on the front stage of higher education: gleaming campuses, smiling students, glowing success stories, and elite rankings. This curated image serves the interests of university administrators, politicians, media conglomerates, and Wall Street investors. But what lies behind the scenes is far more complex—and far more consequential for working families, indebted students, adjunct instructors, and the public at large.

Pulling Back the Curtain

HEI’s mission is to expose what Erving Goffman might call the “backstage” of academia: the place where the elite performance of higher education is rehearsed and maintained through opaque deals, digital enclosures, and predatory practices. It’s where the real business of higher education unfolds—often at odds with the public good.

We investigate the corporatization of the university, the abuse of contingent labor, the unpayable debts foisted on students, and the machinations of political operatives and private equity barons who have colonized education as a commodity. We speak with whistleblowers, student debtors, low-wage academic workers, and those abandoned by a system that promises mobility but too often delivers exploitation.

The Business of the Dream

In the backstage world of higher education, dreams are monetized. Institutions like the University of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University, and even respected nonprofits have built empires on financial aid schemes and manipulated metrics. Behind them are financiers, hedge funds, and lobbying firms whose interests are rarely aligned with students or educators.

The same institutions that publicly tout diversity and access often quietly outsource instruction to underpaid adjuncts, collaborate with surveillance edtech companies, and silence internal dissent. Meanwhile, media organizations that once held universities accountable have cut education reporters or become entangled with the very institutions they should be questioning.

The Hidden Curriculum

The Higher Education Inquirer operates as a counterforce to this manufactured consensus. We are not neutral. We are critical, investigative, and guided by a commitment to social justice, transparency, and truth-telling. We report not only what universities and policymakers say, but what they do—and whom their decisions harm.

Our coverage includes:

Student debt and loan forgiveness, including the struggles of Corinthian Colleges alumni and the unfinished business of accountability.
Adjunct labor and the two-tier academic caste system.
Edtech’s empty promises, from learning analytics to AI hype.
The political economy of elite universities, including their ties to hedge funds, Silicon Valley, and state power.
Federal regulatory theater, where revolving doors between government and for-profit colleges remain a threat to the public interest.

From the Margins to the Archive

HEI serves a different audience—those who have been ignored or exploited by higher education's front-facing PR. We amplify stories from below and archive the struggles that mainstream outlets won’t touch.

We also aim to document history as it happens—before it’s rewritten by university presidents or erased by marketing teams. We provide a long memory in a system increasingly shaped by ahistorical metrics and technocratic solutions.

A Public Good Reclaimed

We don’t pretend to be objective bystanders. Our journalism is part of a larger struggle to reclaim education as a public good, not a private privilege. We call for solidarity with students, educators, and workers. We demand that institutions serve the people who make them run, not just the ones who profit from their prestige.

The backstage of higher education is messy, fraught, and at times devastating. But by pulling back the curtain, we believe there’s still a possibility of building something better.

Sources

The Higher Education Inquirer archives
Whistleblower accounts
U.S. Department of Education public data and FOIA requests
Interviews with contingent faculty and student debtors
Academic research on neoliberalism, debt peonage, and credential capitalism

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Judge Bove, the Rule of Law, and the Reactionary Turn of the Courts

Judge Richard Bove has been publicly critical of judicial institutions, warning that American courts have strayed from their intended function of upholding justice and truth. In particular, Bove has voiced concern about how whistleblowers are treated—targeted for retaliation, marginalized by institutions, and left without recourse in a system designed to shield the powerful. But Bove’s own record and affiliations cast doubt on the consistency of his legal philosophy. As a Trump-aligned appointee, Bove is more likely to deepen the court’s ideological entrenchment than to reverse it. His selective critiques of the judiciary seem less about strengthening the rule of law than about steering it toward reactionary ends.

Bove has written extensively about whistleblower suppression, documenting how statutes like the Whistleblower Protection Act and False Claims Act are gutted by procedural roadblocks and judicial indifference. He has pointed to a pattern in which federal courts quietly dismiss cases before any public accountability can emerge. These arguments have real merit. In education, defense, public health, and finance, those who speak out against corruption are often destroyed professionally—and the courts typically do little to protect them.

Yet Bove’s credibility as a reformer is undermined by his political proximity to Trumpism, a movement that has actively eroded public trust in legal and democratic institutions while consolidating judicial power through appointments, loyalty tests, and legal reinterpretations designed to roll back rights. While Bove criticizes certain elements of the judiciary, he appears to support—and potentially enable—the broader project of reactionary capture.

His recent elevation comes at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court has already lurched to the right, and trust in the institution is near historic lows. The Roberts Court has gutted voting rights, weakened environmental protections, and removed federal abortion protections. These are not isolated rulings; they reflect a larger pattern of judicial rollback. Adding judges like Bove to the lower federal courts—and possibly grooming them for higher positions—is a strategy to entrench that agenda for decades.

The idea that the Supreme Court is now “broken” assumes it was once apolitical. But history suggests otherwise. From Dred Scott and Plessy to Lochner and Buck v. Bell, the Court has long used its authority to uphold racial hierarchies, corporate dominance, and the suppression of dissent. In this sense, Bove does not represent a break with tradition but rather a continuation of it—albeit with a different rhetorical emphasis.

In his writings, Bove laments the loss of public trust in courts. But trust is earned through fair and consistent application of the law, not through ideological fidelity or performative dissent. His own views suggest a selective application of justice: one that claims to protect whistleblowers while aligning with a political movement that regularly vilifies them; one that criticizes judicial corruption while serving those who have actively undermined judicial independence.

The whistleblowers Bove claims to defend are often the same people targeted by the very forces that empowered his rise. Those who exposed abuses at ICE detention centers, in the Trump Organization’s finances, in the handling of COVID-19 data, or in for-profit education scams tied to political donors—many found no champion in the courts. And they are unlikely to find one in Bove.

Bove’s appointment must be understood not just in terms of individual qualifications, but in terms of broader institutional transformation. Courts are being packed not just with conservatives, but with ideologues who share a narrow vision of rights—especially corporate and religious ones—while constraining public protections, reproductive freedoms, and worker rights.

In the long term, this strategy may succeed in shifting the legal consensus even further. The Court, already unmoored from popular legitimacy, could continue to reverse decades of legal precedent. While Bove raises important points about how the system fails truth-tellers, his participation in a wider political project of rollback should not be ignored. His version of the rule of law is unlikely to serve the public—it is more likely to reinforce a system that protects power from accountability.

Sources
Richard Bove, “The System Punishes Whistleblowers While Enabling Crime,” Financial Regulation Newsletter, 2023
Richard Bove, “Why the Courts Are Losing Public Trust,” Independent Legal Review, 2024
National Whistleblower Center, “Judicial Retaliation Against Whistleblowers,” 2023
The Brookings Institution, “The Supreme Court and Public Legitimacy,” 2023
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)
Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010)
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. ___ (2022)
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013)

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Shrouded in Silence: The Problem with Nondisclosure Agreements in Higher Education (DC Whistleblower)

Nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, are quietly undermining the values that higher education claims to uphold—truth, accountability, and the free exchange of ideas. Used by colleges, universities, and education-related nonprofits, these legal tools have become instruments of control. Rather than fostering environments of transparency and ethical responsibility, NDAs are used to conceal wrongdoing, silence dissent, and protect powerful individuals and institutions from public scrutiny.

This issue is not abstract to me. Years ago, while working for a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that claimed to serve the public interest, I was forced to sign an NDA. What I believed would be an opportunity to contribute to meaningful education reform turned into a lesson in how institutions manipulate legal agreements to suppress criticism. I was not allowed to speak publicly about unethical behavior I observed—behavior that directly affected low-income students and underpaid labor. That experience has stayed with me, and it mirrors the stories I now hear from others across higher education.

In today’s academic landscape, NDAs are often imposed on staff, faculty, and students at vulnerable moments—after reporting sexual harassment, exposing fraud, or simply trying to leave a toxic workplace. Institutions frame these agreements as standard procedure, offering settlements or severance in exchange for permanent silence. The reality is coercive: speak up and risk losing not just financial security, but career prospects and professional reputation.

Faculty and staff on contingent contracts—especially adjuncts—are easy targets for this kind of legal intimidation. Graduate students, already caught in exploitative labor arrangements, are often silenced through similar means. Survivors of sexual assault who report misconduct are sometimes pushed into signing NDAs as part of resolution agreements, which then prevent them from warning others or publicly critiquing the institution's response. Even undergraduate students who face institutional failure or discrimination can find themselves legally bound to stay silent.

NDAs have also become standard practice in for-profit and quasi-profit education operations. Employees at a number of edtech companies have described being pressured into signing agreements that prohibit them from disclosing questionable practices, including deceptive marketing, inflated job placement claims, and the targeting of vulnerable students for high-interest loans. Some are warned explicitly that any public statements—even years later—could bring legal consequences.

What makes NDAs so dangerous in education is their impact on public knowledge and democratic accountability. Institutions that receive millions or even billions in federal and state funding are able to hide systemic issues from lawmakers, regulators, journalists, and the public. Whistleblowers, once silenced, are effectively erased from the narrative. Patterns of abuse continue, protected by layers of legal language and institutional inertia. Journalists investigating misconduct in higher education—including those of us at The Higher Education Inquirer—frequently encounter potential sources who decline to speak on the record due to NDAs. The agreements don’t just silence individuals—they distort the historical and ethical record.

The use of NDAs also undermines government oversight. Agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education rely on insiders to report fraud and abuse related to Title IV funding. But when those insiders are bound by NDAs, they are forced to weigh the public interest against the threat of lawsuits. In this way, NDAs shield not only bad actors but also fraudulent systems that disproportionately harm students from working-class, Black, and Brown communities.

Legislative responses have so far been piecemeal. A few states have passed laws restricting NDAs in sexual misconduct settlements, but these measures rarely address the broader use of NDAs in cases of fraud, labor violations, or institutional abuse. Nor do they cover students, faculty, or contractors who are pressured into silence outside of formal settlements.

We need stronger federal protections for whistleblowers in education. We need laws that prohibit the use of NDAs by institutions that receive public funds. Accrediting bodies must stop ignoring the use of legal intimidation as a governance practice. And we need a cultural shift in higher education—a collective refusal to treat silence as professionalism.

As someone who once signed away my voice under legal pressure, I understand the fear and isolation that NDAs produce. But I also believe that silence, when coerced, is not consent—it’s complicity enforced by power. And in a system as dependent on public trust and democratic ideals as education, that silence comes at a cost we can no longer afford to ignore.

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Neoliberalism, Accreditation, and the Endless Reinvention of Higher Ed Scams

Fraudsters are like cockroaches: persistent, hard to eliminate, and always scurrying just beneath the surface. And like cockroaches, when you see one, you can assume many more are hidden from view. In the sprawling, trillion-dollar ecosystem of American higher education—built on trust, hope, and credentials—fraud has been a constant companion. And under neoliberalism, it doesn’t just survive. It adapts, multiplies, and thrives.

The case of Anthony Bieda and the newly formed National Association for Academic Excellence (NAAE) is a vivid reminder of how this ecosystem protects and even rewards those who have failed the public. Bieda, a former executive at the disgraced Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), is now fronting a fresh accreditation startup, backed by conservative donors and political forces aligned with Donald Trump’s vision for higher ed deregulation.

NAAE’s mission is to provide a “holistic,” “anti-woke” alternative to traditional accreditors, evaluating colleges not on outcomes like graduation rates or job placement, but on how they shape the “human person.” It's vague, ideological, and intentionally opaque. Even Bieda admits the metrics are a secret—soon to be intellectual property.

Fraud in American higher education didn’t start with Trump University or Corinthian Colleges. It dates back to the 19th century, when diploma mills sold degrees like snake oil. In the early 20th century, accreditation systems emerged to clean up the mess—but fraud simply evolved. As the federal government opened the spigot of student aid after World War II, for-profit colleges and shady operators followed the money.

By the 2000s, the con had been professionalized. Publicly traded companies like Corinthian and ITT Tech learned how to game the system, using slick advertising, inflated job placement rates, and predatory recruiting to rake in billions in Title IV funds. The students—often low-income, Black, Latino, veterans, or single mothers—were left with broken promises and ballooning debt.

The watchdogs failed them. And some, like ACICS, weren’t just negligent—they were complicit.

In theory, accreditors are gatekeepers. In practice, they’ve too often been enablers. Accreditation bodies are funded by the very institutions they review, leading to deep structural conflicts of interest. ACICS became notorious for accrediting schools that federal and state regulators had flagged as predatory. After years of scrutiny, it was finally shut down in 2022.

Yet here we are, three years later, with ACICS’s former leader launching a new accrediting agency, this time cloaked in the language of "freedom of thought" and "anti-wokeness." Backed by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters (AASL), which insists it’s apolitical despite pushing overt culture war themes, NAAE is asking to be trusted with federal gatekeeping power.

It’s neoliberalism in action: dismantle public systems, defang oversight, and recycle failed leaders with fresh branding. The logic isn’t about protecting students—it’s about deregulating markets under the guise of reform.

The digital age has only made things worse. Online colleges with low academic standards, limited faculty oversight, and profit-driven motives are booming. AI will soon be used not just in instruction and grading, but in accreditation assessments themselves. NAAE promises to use AI to detect inconsistencies and enforce its vague standards. But when the standards themselves are ideological and untested, automation becomes a smokescreen.

Meanwhile, shady consultants, student loan relief scammers, and credentialing platforms are multiplying. It's not just about bad schools anymore—it’s an entire financialized ecosystem that treats students as data points and debtors.

Occasionally, the public sees the fraud for what it is. Corinthian and ITT collapsed. Whistleblowers have emerged. Borrower defense lawsuits have won relief. But like cockroaches, fraudsters scatter and reassemble elsewhere. They form new schools, new agencies, new lobbies. They rebrand and wait for the political winds to shift.

And with Trump pushing to dismantle the Department of Education and rewrite accreditation rules by executive order, the roaches are back in the kitchen.

At the Higher Education Inquirer, we believe fraud is not just a byproduct of capitalism—it’s a feature of an underregulated, investor-driven model of education. The solution is not to invent new accreditors with old ideas, but to demand radical transparency and public accountability.

That means open data on outcomes, default rates, and executive pay. It means public audits of accreditor decisions. It requires whistleblower protections for staff and students. And it must include criminal and financial penalties for institutional fraud.

Because fraudsters are like cockroaches. You may never eliminate them all—but you can turn on the lights, close the cracks, and make it a lot harder for them to scurry back into power.

Sources
Theo Scheer, “He Helped Lead a Disgraced College Accreditor. Under Trump, He Might Have Another Shot.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 21, 2025
U.S. Department of Education actions on ACICS (2016–2022)
Higher Education Inquirer reporting on for-profit colleges, accreditation failures, and Trump-era education policy
Interviews with whistleblowers and former students of collapsed institutions

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

The Reality of Higher Ed Fraud in 2025

"Fraudsters are like cockroaches"--Anonymous higher education businessman

Fraudsters are like cockroaches: persistent, hard to eliminate, and always scurrying just beneath the surface. And like cockroaches, when you see one, you can assume many more are hidden from view. In the vast, sprawling ecosystem of US higher education—a multi-trillion-dollar industry built on trust, hope, and credentials—fraud has been a lurking presence for more than a century. From diploma mills to for-profit scams, grade inflation to financial aid abuse, deceit has found fertile ground wherever oversight is weak and incentives are perverse.

The Gilded Roots of Fraud

Fraud in American higher education didn’t begin with Trump University or Corinthian Colleges. The roots go back to the 19th century, when the proliferation of unregulated “colleges” allowed opportunists to sell degrees to anyone willing to pay. These early diploma mills, often run by religious organizations or independent operators, flourished in an era before accreditation, issuing worthless credentials that nevertheless offered the illusion of legitimacy.

By the early 20th century, regional accreditation and federal involvement began to tame the worst actors, but fraud adapted. Unethical schools learned how to mimic the symbols of respectability, while federal dollars—including GI Bill money and later Pell Grants and federal student loans—provided irresistible bait.

For-Profit Colleges and the Federal ATM

The rise of for-profit higher education in the post-WWII era, especially from the 1970s onward, signaled a new chapter in educational fraud. Companies like ITT Technical Institute, Corinthian Colleges, and Education Management Corporation were publicly traded entities or private equity darlings that mastered the art of siphoning billions in taxpayer dollars while leaving students with worthless credentials and mountains of debt.

The fraud wasn’t always overt—it often came wrapped in slick marketing, predatory recruiting, falsified job placement statistics, and pressure to enroll students regardless of academic readiness. These institutions gamed federal financial aid systems, manipulating default rates and exploiting regulatory loopholes.

Even when regulators like the GAO or the Department of Education uncovered misconduct, enforcement was sporadic and too often came after the damage was done. In many cases, executives walked away with millions, while students—often from low-income, Black, Latino, and veteran communities—were left in financial ruin.

Accreditation as a Shield

One of the most confounding aspects of US higher ed fraud is the role of accreditors. Supposed to act as gatekeepers, many regional and national accreditors have served more as enablers—either asleep at the wheel or financially incentivized to look the other way. When accreditors are funded by the very institutions they review, conflict of interest becomes systemic.

This has allowed weak or outright fraudulent institutions to hide behind the veneer of legitimacy. Some accreditors, like ACICS (Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools), became infamous for rubber-stamping schools that should have been shuttered. ACICS accredited both ITT Tech and Corinthian before its federal recognition was finally revoked in 2022.

The New Wave: Online and AI-Enabled Scams

The digital age has added new dimensions to academic fraud. Online colleges like University of Phoenix, Ashford University (now University of Arizona Global Campus), and Western Governors University have raised concerns about low faculty oversight, cookie-cutter instruction, and questions about academic rigor. While not all online institutions are fraudulent, the modality makes it easier to scale shady practices and reduce accountability.

Now, with generative AI entering the classroom and enrollment systems, new questions emerge: How do we ensure academic honesty in an age of algorithmic ghostwriting? How will fraud evolve as institutions increasingly rely on automated admissions, grading, and content delivery?

And it's not just schools. Consultants, influencers, and shady loan servicers feed off the system like parasites—promising student loan relief, admissions guarantees, or academic success for a fee. In this ecosystem, fraud doesn't just survive—it thrives.

When the Roaches Scatter

Occasionally, the light shines in. Whistleblowers, investigative journalists, and government agencies have at times forced fraudsters into the open. Lawsuits have led to settlements. Schools have closed. Presidents have resigned. But like cockroaches, the fraud rarely disappears—it relocates, rebrands, and reinvents itself.

Even with borrower defense to repayment, loan forgiveness programs, and federal oversight mechanisms, restitution often comes too late. And public memory is short. Fraudulent operators have learned how to outlast administrations, court cases, and media cycles.

A Call to Radical Transparency

The Higher Education Inquirer has long called for radical transparency in US higher education. That means open data on outcomes, federal aid, loan default rates, salaries of top administrators, and accreditor performance. It means holding college leaders and board members accountable for failures—not rewarding them with golden parachutes or public pensions.

Fraud may be a permanent feature of capitalist education systems, but its impact can be minimized with independent media scrutiny, better whistleblower protections, and public investment that prioritizes students—not shareholders.

Because fraudsters are like cockroaches. You may never kill them all, but you can make the kitchen a whole lot harder to live in.

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