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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

8 Tiny Japanese Habits That Make a Massive Difference (What’s The Next Level)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sources

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

Forecasting the U.S. College Meltdown: How Higher Education Inquirer’s 2016 Warnings Played Out, 2016–2025 (Glen McGhee)

In December 2016, the Higher Education Inquirer published a set of 18 predictions warning of an ongoing “U.S. College Meltdown.” At the time, these warnings ran counter to the dominant narrative promoted by university leaders, accreditation agencies, Wall Street analysts, and much of the higher education press. College, readers were assured, remained a sound investment. Institutional risks were described as isolated, manageable, or limited to a small number of poorly run schools.

Nearly nine years later, that confidence has collapsed.

A comprehensive review of publicly available data, investigative journalism, court records, and government reports shows that 17 of the Higher Education Inquirer’s 18 predictions—94.4 percent—have been fully or partially confirmed. What was once framed as speculation now reads as an early diagnosis of a system already in advanced decline.

This article is not a victory lap. It is an accounting—of warnings ignored, of structural failures compounded, and of a higher education system reshaped less by learning than by debt, austerity, and financial engineering.

The Growth of Student Debt

In 2016, total student loan debt stood at approximately $1.4 trillion. By 2025, it had surpassed $1.8 trillion, despite repeated claims that the crisis was stabilizing. Millions of borrowers cycled in and out of forbearance, delinquency, and default, often unaware of the long-term consequences of capitalization, interest accrual, and damaged credit.

Temporary relief programs—pandemic pauses, income-driven repayment plans, and selective forgiveness—offered short-term breathing room while failing to address the underlying cost structure of higher education. Legal challenges and administrative reversals further destabilized borrower expectations, reinforcing the sense that student debt had become a permanent feature of American life rather than a transitional burden.

The Higher Education Inquirer warned in 2016 that student loans would increasingly function as a disciplinary mechanism, constraining career choice, delaying family formation, and suppressing economic mobility. That warning has proven prescient.

Graduate Underemployment and the Erosion of the Degree Premium

Another core prediction concerned the labor market. While headline unemployment numbers often appeared strong, the quality of employment deteriorated. By the early 2020s, a majority of recent four-year college graduates were underemployed—working in jobs that did not require a degree or offered limited advancement.

Wages stagnated even as credential requirements rose. Employers demanded more education for the same roles, while offering less stability in return. The result was a generation of graduates caught between rising expectations and diminishing returns.

This shift exposed a contradiction at the heart of the modern university: institutions continued to market degrees as pathways to prosperity, even as internal data increasingly showed that outcomes varied dramatically by institution, major, race, and class.

Enrollment Decline and the Demographic Cliff

The enrollment downturn predicted in 2016 arrived in waves. First came post–Great Recession skepticism. Then demographic decline reduced the number of traditional college-age students. Finally, the pandemic accelerated distrust, remote learning fatigue, and financial strain.

By the mid-2020s, enrollment losses were no longer cyclical. They were structural.

Colleges responded not by rethinking pricing or mission, but by cutting costs. Programs were eliminated, faculty positions left unfilled, and student services hollowed out. In rural and working-class regions, entire communities lost anchor institutions that had served as employers, cultural centers, and pathways to upward mobility.

Institutional Debt, Financialization, and Risk Shifting

One of the most underreported developments has been the rise of institutional debt. Facing declining tuition revenue, many colleges turned to bond markets to finance operations, capital projects, or refinancing. This strategy delayed collapse but increased long-term vulnerability.

The Higher Education Inquirer warned that debt-financed survival strategies would transfer risk downward—onto students through higher tuition, onto staff through layoffs, and onto local governments when institutions failed. That pattern has repeated itself across the country.

Meanwhile, elite universities with massive endowments continued to expand, insulate themselves from risk, and benefit from tax advantages unavailable to less wealthy institutions.

Closures, Mergers, and Asset Stripping

Since 2016, well over one hundred colleges have closed, merged, or been absorbed. Many closures were preceded by years of warning signs: declining enrollment, deferred maintenance, accreditation scrutiny, and emergency fundraising campaigns.

In some cases, institutions sold land, buildings, or entire campuses to survive. In others, boards pursued mergers that preserved branding while eliminating local governance and jobs.

These were not isolated failures. They were the predictable outcome of a system that prioritized growth, prestige, and financial metrics over resilience and public accountability.

The Limits of Reform and the Failure of Oversight

Perhaps the most sobering confirmation of the 2016 analysis is not any single data point, but the broader failure of reform. Despite abundant evidence of harm, regulatory responses remained fragmented and reactive. Accreditation agencies rarely intervened early. Federal enforcement was inconsistent. Media coverage often framed crises as unfortunate anomalies rather than systemic outcomes.

The Higher Education Inquirer argued in 2016 that the greatest risk was not collapse itself, but normalization—the slow acceptance of dysfunction as inevitable. That normalization is now visible in policy debates that treat mass underemployment, lifelong debt, and institutional instability as the cost of doing business.

A Crisis Foretold

The U.S. college meltdown did not arrive as a single dramatic event. It unfolded slowly, unevenly, and predictably—through spreadsheets, bond prospectuses, enrollment dashboards, and borrower accounts.

The accuracy of these forecasts underscores a deeper truth: the crisis was foreseeable. It was documented. It was warned about. What was missing was the willingness to act.

The Higher Education Inquirer published its predictions in 2016 not to provoke fear, but to provoke accountability. Nine years later, the record is clear. The meltdown was not an accident. It was a choice—made repeatedly, by institutions and policymakers who believed the system could absorb unlimited strain.

It could not.

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Sources
LendingTree; EducationData; Inside Higher Ed; Higher Ed Dive; Forbes; NPR; Brookings Institution; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

College Meltdown 2026 (Glen McGhee)

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

The Waning of College Mania

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

White-Collar Unemployment and the Broken Value Proposition

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

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

Demographic Collapse and Institutional Failures

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

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

Student Debt, Inequality, and Loss of Legitimacy

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

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

The Road Ahead: Contraction, Consolidation, and Possibility

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

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

• substantial public reinvestment,

• free or low-cost pathways for essential programs,

• accountability for predatory institutions,

• democratized governance, and

• a commitment to racial and economic justice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Higher Education Without Illusions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources & Further Reading:

• An American Sickness, Elisabeth Rosenthal

• Medical Apartheid, Harriet Washington

• Body and Soul, Alondra Nelson

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

South University 2026 — A University at a Crossroads

Founded in 1899, South University has long presented itself as a student-centered institution, offering a broad array of undergraduate and graduate programs across multiple campuses and online. As 2026 dawns, the university finds itself at a crossroads. Recent milestones — including renewed accreditation, professional program successes, and new leadership — coexist with financial pressure, a complicated for-profit legacy, and troubling reports from former employees about the institution’s culture and practices.

In December 2024, SU’s regional accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), removed the university from Warning status and granted a 10-year reaffirmation of its institutional accreditation, contingent upon monitoring. At the programmatic level, the Doctor of Pharmacy program was re-accredited through June 2028 by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the Physician Assistant program at the West Palm Beach campus earned a 10-year Accreditation-Continued status from ARC-PA. These developments underscore the university’s ability to deliver programs meeting professional and regional standards.

On October 31, 2025, Benjamin J. DeGweck was named CEO and Chancellor, bringing more than two decades of experience in higher-education leadership, legal affairs, and organizational strategy. His appointment reflects an effort to navigate complex challenges with stronger governance and renewed strategic focus.

Despite these signs of institutional competence, South University enters 2026 under significant financial stress. A $35.4 million balloon payment on a pandemic-era loan from the Federal Reserve’s Main Street Lending Program looms, while Heightened Cash Monitoring (HCM) by the Department of Education means federal student aid is subject to additional scrutiny. These pressures compound the university’s already fraught history. Previously a for-profit institution, SU faced lawsuits and a class-action settlement tied to misconduct allegations and was included among schools eligible for student loan cancellation after findings of fraud. Even after its 2023 transition to independent nonprofit status, the legacy of those practices continues to affect public trust.

Employee accounts provide an additional lens on the university’s culture and priorities. Reviews on Glassdoor, particularly from admissions and sales staff, describe a workplace dominated by a “con-like mentality” in training and sales tactics, in which management appears focused on producing just enough passing grades to remain financially viable rather than ensuring student success. One reviewer wrote that the university “takes advantage of the poor leveraging they have in life — whether it be financial or criminal records — and charges twice the amount of other schools,” describing the institution as “just above a scam.” Others recounted high-pressure enrollment quotas, constant emphasis on revenue, and a workplace culture that prioritizes organizational survival over transparency or ethical student support. These accounts suggest that revenue imperatives and regulatory pressures may sometimes overshadow educational quality.

Looking ahead, 2026 could be a pivotal year. The university has the opportunity to stabilize under DeGweck’s leadership, strengthen student outcomes, and leverage accredited professional programs to meet workforce demand. At the same time, financial pressures may force programmatic consolidation or strategic restructuring, and employee critiques alongside HCM oversight could amplify reputational risk. For students, recent accreditations provide cautious optimism, but due diligence regarding program outcomes, job placement rates, and federal aid eligibility remains essential. For policymakers and advocates focused on equity and accountability, the combination of financial strain, regulatory oversight, and internal criticism underscores the continuing need for scrutiny of formerly for-profit institutions.

South University in 2026 is neither fully secure nor entirely at risk. Its trajectory will depend on leadership, governance, and the ability to reconcile its financial and operational pressures with its educational mission. How the university navigates this moment may determine whether it becomes a revitalized opportunity for students or another cautionary tale in the landscape of American higher education.

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Sources

South University. South University Achieves 10-Year Reaffirmation of Accreditation by SACSCOC. inside.southuniversity.edu

Higher Education Inquirer. South University’s Accreditor Takes Institution Off Warning, Requires Monitoring Report. December 2024. highereducationinquirer.org

South University. Doctor of Pharmacy Program is Accredited Through June 2028. southuniversity.edu

PR Newswire. South University West Palm Beach Physician Assistant Program Achieves 10-Year Accreditation-Continued Status from ARC-PA. prnewswire.com

South University. Benjamin J. DeGweck Named New CEO and Chancellor. October 31, 2025. southuniversity.edu

Higher Education Inquirer. South University Faces $35.4 Million Balloon Payment on Pandemic-Era Loan. November 2025. highereducationinquirer.org

Wikipedia. South University. en.wikipedia.org

South University. South University Independent Again. 2023. southuniversity.edu

Glassdoor. South University Reviews. glassdoor.com

Bari Weiss, UATX, and the Corporate Rewriting of “Free Speech”

Bari Weiss has built a powerful public identity as a defender of free speech against institutional conformity. From elite universities to legacy newsrooms, she presents herself as a principled dissenter confronting ideological capture. Yet her expanding influence across higher education and corporate media suggests something deeper than individual controversy. It reveals how elite institutions are increasingly repackaging control, consolidation, and risk management as rebellion.

Weiss’s involvement in the University of Austin and her editorial authority at CBS News illustrate how the language of free inquiry has been absorbed into a broader project of institutional realignment rather than democratization.

The University of Austin was launched in 2021 as a highly publicized response to what its founders described as illiberal conditions in American higher education. Weiss, as a co-founder and public face of the project, helped frame UATX as a refuge for intellectual risk-taking and heterodox thought. Yet the institution was not built from the margins of academia. It emerged through the backing of wealthy donors, venture capitalists, tech executives, and high-profile media figures who already occupy powerful positions within American public life.

UATX’s critique of higher education centers almost entirely on cultural politics, presenting universities as hostile to dissent while leaving largely untouched the material structures that govern academic freedom. The casualization of academic labor, the erosion of tenure, donor influence over research agendas, student debt as a disciplinary force, and retaliation against labor organizers and whistleblowers rarely figure into the narrative. In this way, UATX offers not a systemic challenge to elite education but an exit strategy for those with the resources to opt out of public accountability.

The same logic appears in Weiss’s role within legacy media. In late 2025, CBS News pulled a completed investigative segment from 60 Minutes examining the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. The segment had reportedly passed legal and editorial review. The decision to shelve it, attributed to a demand for additional on-the-record administration comment, sparked internal outrage. Veteran journalists described the move as political interference rather than standard editorial caution, with some staff reportedly threatening to resign.

The episode carried a deep irony. One of the most prominent self-described defenders of free speech now presided over the suppression of investigative journalism within one of the country’s most storied news programs. Whether temporary or permanent, the delay signaled a shift in institutional priorities, where political sensitivity and corporate risk appeared to outweigh journalistic autonomy.

This controversy unfolded amid broader upheaval at CBS News. Longtime anchors departed the CBS Evening News in emotional farewells as management reshuffled talent and redefined the network’s public posture. Inside the newsroom, morale reportedly declined as staff faced uncertainty about editorial direction, layoffs, and ideological repositioning. Weiss reportedly questioned journalists about public perceptions of bias, reinforcing a top-down effort to rebrand the organization rather than engage in collective editorial deliberation.

These developments cannot be separated from the corporate transformation of CBS’s parent company. Paramount Global has undergone a sweeping restructuring shaped by its merger with Skydance Media, led by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Under this new ownership structure, CBS News has been encouraged to restore “balance” and credibility, language that often accompanies efforts to reduce investigative risk and align journalism more closely with corporate and political interests.

At the same time, Paramount’s deal-making has intersected with elite political networks. Jared Kushner’s private equity firm was involved in related media acquisition efforts before withdrawing, highlighting the increasingly blurred lines between media ownership, political influence, and capital consolidation. In this environment, editorial independence is not abolished outright but carefully managed, constrained by the priorities of ownership and the sensitivities of power.

What connects UATX and CBS News under Weiss’s influence is not ideology so much as structure. In both cases, authority flows upward while dissent is curated. Free inquiry is framed as a moral value but detached from democratic governance, labor protections, or accountability to those most vulnerable to institutional retaliation. Meanwhile, individuals and groups who experience genuine silencing in academia and media—adjunct faculty, student activists, labor organizers, whistleblowers, and critics of militarism or donor power—remain largely absent from this version of the free speech debate.

This pattern is familiar within higher education. When institutions face crises of legitimacy, elites rarely pursue democratization. Instead, they create alternatives that preserve control under new branding: private institutes, donor-led centers, honors colleges, and parallel universities. Legacy media has followed a similar path, repackaging dissent while narrowing the scope of accountability.

Bari Weiss is not an anomaly within this landscape. She is emblematic of it. Her influence reflects how “free speech” has become an aesthetic rather than a structural commitment, invoked loudly while practiced selectively.

The danger is not that Weiss holds strong opinions. It is that her framework for free speech travels so easily across institutions precisely because it leaves their economic and power relations intact. The University of Austin does not confront the forces hollowing out higher education. CBS News, under corporate consolidation, risks muting the investigative journalism that once defined it. In both cases, freedom becomes a branding strategy rather than a democratic practice.

For those concerned with truly independent journalism and genuinely democratic education, the lesson is clear. Speech is never just about speech. It is about ownership, power, and who bears the consequences when truth becomes inconvenient.

Stephen Ashley’s Gift and the Reputational Laundering of Elite Wealth

In December 2025, Cornell University announced a $55 million gift from alumnus Stephen B. Ashley to endow the newly named Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment. The university presented the donation as a transformative investment in sustainability, global development, and interdisciplinary research. Yet behind the headlines of generosity lies a pattern that has come to define elite higher education: the use of philanthropy to launder reputations and sanitize wealth accumulated through systems that produce widespread harm.

Ashley’s career exemplifies this dynamic. As a longtime real estate investor and head of The Ashley Companies, he amassed significant wealth. His tenure on the board of Fannie Mae, including as chairman in the mid-2000s, coincided with periods of accounting irregularities, risky mortgage practices, and systemic failures in governance. Fannie Mae’s collapse during the 2008 financial crisis devastated millions of Americans, particularly low-income and minority households, yet board members and executives largely escaped personal consequences. Ashley’s wealth, in part derived from this environment, is now being funneled into a university named for him — transforming historical responsibility into a narrative of generosity.

The pattern extends beyond domestic finance. Ashley also serves on the Founders Council of the Middle East Investment Initiative (MEII), a nonprofit focused on private-sector development in the Middle East. While MEII frames itself as a promoter of economic growth and development, critics argue that such organizations operate within a global financial ecosystem that prioritizes investor stability and elite networks over democratic accountability or local economic agency. Participation in these initiatives may be legal, even philanthropic, but they reinforce Ashley’s image as a global benefactor without confronting the broader systemic power he wields.

Cornell, like many elite institutions, accepts such gifts with minimal scrutiny, emphasizing the moral and intellectual good the donation enables while obscuring the histories of harm that made the wealth possible. Naming a school dedicated to equity, sustainability, and global development after a figure linked to financial crisis and speculative practices exemplifies the reputational laundering function universities serve for wealthy donors. The institution converts fortunes built in high-stakes, opaque, or socially harmful arenas into lasting prestige, moral capital, and scholarly legitimacy — all while reinforcing its own image as an engine of public good.

This is not a question of legality. Ashley’s wealth is largely untarnished in the courts. It is a question of accountability, ethics, and institutional values. By turning wealth into permanent naming rights, universities like Cornell signal that elite power can be absolved through philanthropy, creating a structural dynamic where generosity replaces responsibility, and reputation is more durable than accountability.

For students, faculty, and the public interested in environmental justice, social equity, and global development, the contradiction is stark. The same systems that generate inequality now fund the study and critique of inequality itself. Elite institutions benefit materially and symbolically from the work of those who profited from structural harm, even as the original consequences fade from public memory. Until universities confront this tension, higher education will continue to function as a reputational laundromat for elite wealth, transforming past systemic damage into present prestige.

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Sources

Cornell University, “Historic Gift Endows New CALS School,” Cornell News
Cornell Sun, coverage of the Ashley School announcement
Federal Housing Finance Agency, Special Examination Reports on Fannie Mae (2005–2008)
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission materials on Fannie Mae governance
Reuters, coverage of post-crisis shareholder litigation involving Fannie Mae board leadership
Middle East Investment Initiative, Board and Founders Council listings
Aspen Institute, background on MEII origins

Teens Who Made A Difference: Barbara Rose Johns

History often portrays social change as the work of seasoned leaders, elected officials, or famous intellectuals. Yet again and again, it is young people—often teenagers with little formal power—who ignite movements that reshape institutions and force nations to confront injustice. Long before they could vote, hold office, or even graduate, these teens recognized wrongs that adults had normalized and acted with courage that altered the course of history.

Among the most consequential examples in U.S. education history is Barbara Rose Johns, a 16-year-old high school student whose leadership in 1951 helped set in motion events that would culminate in Brown v. Board of Education and the formal end of legalized school segregation.

In the spring of 1951, Johns was a junior at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The school, designated for Black students under Jim Crow law, was overcrowded and severely underfunded. Students were taught in makeshift tar-paper shacks without adequate heat. Textbooks and supplies were outdated, and facilities bore little resemblance to those at the nearby white high school. For years, parents and community leaders had petitioned local officials for improvements, but their appeals were ignored.

Johns concluded that waiting for adults or authorities to act was futile. Acting largely on her own initiative, she secretly organized a student strike. On April 23, 1951, more than 450 students walked out of their classrooms. Johns had planned an assembly in advance, arranging for a speaker and framing the protest not as a request for cosmetic improvements but as a challenge to the underlying injustice of segregation itself. At just 16 years old, she demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of how institutional inequality operated and how public action could force change.

The strike quickly attracted attention beyond Prince Edward County. It led to involvement from the NAACP, including attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill, and later Thurgood Marshall. What began as a protest against unsafe and unequal facilities evolved into a direct legal challenge to segregated schooling. The resulting case, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, became one of the five cases consolidated into the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

The personal consequences for Johns were severe. She and her family faced threats and intimidation, and she was sent to live with relatives outside Virginia for her safety. For decades, her role received relatively little public recognition, even as the Brown decision became one of the most celebrated rulings in American history. Yet without her initiative, one of the central cases behind Brown might never have existed.

Barbara Johns’ story underscores a broader truth about social change: teenagers are not merely passive recipients of policy decisions, especially in education. They experience institutional inequality firsthand, and when they organize, they often articulate moral truths that adults have learned to tolerate or rationalize. From desegregation to contemporary student movements challenging unequal funding, surveillance, gun violence, and climate inaction, youth activism has repeatedly forced institutions to confront contradictions between democratic ideals and lived reality.

More than seventy years after the Moton High School strike, American education remains deeply unequal. Schools are still segregated by race and income, facilities vary dramatically by zip code, and access to opportunity is uneven. Johns’ legacy remains relevant precisely because the conditions that provoked her action have not fully disappeared. Her story challenges educators, policymakers, and communities to ask why it so often falls to young people to demand justice—and why their leadership is so frequently overlooked.

Barbara Rose Johns did not wait for permission to make history. She organized, resisted, and changed the trajectory of American education while still a teenager. In remembering her, we are reminded that meaningful change often begins not in boardrooms or legislatures, but in classrooms where students decide that injustice is no longer acceptable.

Sources

Barbara Rose Johns, Wikipedia.
Smithsonian National Museum of American History, “The Moton School Strike, 1951.”
Library of Congress, Civil Rights History Project, Prince Edward County and Davis v. County School Board.
National Park Service, Robert Russa Moton High School National Historic Landmark.
Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality.

U.S. Interventions in the Americas: A Historical Pattern of Force, Profit, and Human Cost

From the mid‑19th century to today, U.S. interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean have consistently combined military force, political influence, and economic pressure. Across this long arc, millions of lives have been shaped—often shattered—by policies that prioritize strategic advantage over human flourishing. Today’s geopolitical tensions with Venezuela are the latest flashpoint in a historical pattern that rewards elites while exacting profound human costs.

Note on Timing: This article is intentionally posted on Christmas Day 2025, a day traditionally associated with peace, goodwill, and reflection, to underscore the contrast between those ideals and the ongoing human toll of U.S. militarism and intervention abroad. The symbolic timing is a reminder that while many celebrate, others suffer the consequences of policies driven by power, profit, and geopolitics.

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A Critical Warning for Students and Young People

As Higher Education Inquirer has repeatedly argued, the United States’ military footprint—its wars, recruitment programs, and entanglements with higher education—has deep consequences not just abroad but at home. ROTC programs and military enlistment are often marketed as pathways to education and economic stability, but they also funnel young people into systems with long‑term obligations, moral hazards, and psychological risk. Prospective enlistees and their families should think twice before committing to military pathways that may bind them to morally questionable conflicts and institutional control.

Moreover, U.S. higher education has become deeply entwined with kleptocracy, militarism, and colonialism, supporting war economies and benefiting from federal research contracts with defense and intelligence partners that obscure the real human costs of empire. These warnings are especially salient in the context of Venezuela and similar interventions, where human toll and geopolitical stakes demand deeper scrutiny.

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Smedley Butler: War Is a Racket and the Business Plot

Major General Smedley D. Butler, among the most decorated U.S. Marines, became one of the U.S. military’s most outspoken critics. In his 1935 War Is a Racket, Butler rejected romantic notions of military glory and exposed the economic motives behind many interventions:

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.”

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service… being a high‑class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

“Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.”

Butler’s warnings were not abstract. In 1933, he was approached to lead a coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt, known as the Business Plot, which he publicly exposed. His testimony before Congress revealed how elite interests sought to use military power to overthrow democratic government, an episode that underscores his critique of war as a tool for entrenched interests at the expense of ordinary people.

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Historical Interventions and Their Toll

Below is a timeline of major U.S. interventions in the Americas, with estimated deaths, showing the human cost of policies that often served strategic or economic interests over humanitarian ones:

Period	Location	Event / Nature of Intervention	Estimated Deaths
1846–1848	Mexico	Mexican-American War: Territorial conquest	~25,000 Mexicans
1898	Cuba/P.R.	Spanish-American War: U.S. seized P.R.; Cuba protectorate	~15,000–60,000 (90% disease)
1914	Mexico	Occupation of Veracruz: U.S. port seizure	~300 Mexicans
1915–1934	Haiti	Military Occupation: Suppression of rebellions	~3,000–15,000
1916–1924	Dominican Rep.	Marine Occupation: Control of customs/finance	~4,000
1954	Guatemala	Op. PBSuccess: CIA coup against Árbenz; led to civil war	150,000–250,000*
1965	Dominican Rep.	Op. Power Pack: U.S. intervention during civil war	~3,000
1973–1990	Chile	U.S.-backed Coup/Regime: Pinochet dictatorship	3,000–28,000*
1975–1983	S. America	Operation Condor: CIA-supported intelligence network	~60,000*
1976–1983	Argentina	Dirty War: U.S.-supported military junta and coup	~30,000*
1979–1992	El Salvador	Civil War: Massive military aid to govt forces	35,000–75,000*
1981–1990	Nicaragua	Iran-Contra Affair: Covert support for Contras	~30,000–50,000*
1989	Panama	Operation Just Cause: Invasion to remove Noriega	500–3,000
2025	Venezuela	Naval Blockade: Active maritime strikes and standoff	100+ (to date)

*Estimates include civilian casualties and deaths indirectly caused by U.S.-supported interventions.

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Venezuela and the Global Politics of Intervention

Venezuela’s 2025 crisis is the latest in a long history of U.S. pressure in the hemisphere. A naval blockade—accompanied by maritime strikes and political isolation—has already produced more than 100 confirmed deaths. Historically, interventions like this have often prioritized U.S. strategic or economic interests over local welfare.

The situation is further complicated by global geopolitics. Former President Donald Trump, who recently pardoned key figures involved in controversial interventions, including Iran‑Contra actors, also maintains strategic ties with China and Russia, highlighting how interventions are entangled with global power plays that affect universities, recruitment pipelines, and domestic politics alike.

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A Call to Rethink Intervention and Recruitment

Smedley Butler’s critique remains urgent: to “smash the racket,” profit must be removed from war, military force should be strictly defensive, and decisions about war must rest with those who bear its consequences. From Mexico to Venezuela—and including covert operations like Iran‑Contra—the historical record shows how interventions serve a narrow elite while imposing massive human costs.

HEI’s warnings underscore that higher education, ROTC programs, and military recruitment pipelines are not neutral pathways but deeply embedded parts of systems that reproduce extraction, militarism, and inequality. Students, educators, and families must critically evaluate the incentives and promises of military pathways and demand institutions that serve learning, opportunity, and justice rather than empire.

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Sources

1. Butler, Smedley D. War Is a Racket. Round Table Press, 1935.

2. U.S. Congressional Record and Butler testimony on the Business Plot, 1934.

3. Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.

4. Scott, Peter Dale. Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America.

5. Reporting on Trump pardons, Iran‑Contra participants, and global alliances (2020–2025).

6. Higher Education Inquirer, “Kleptocracy, Militarism, Colonialism: A Counterrecruiting Call for Students and Families,” December 7, 2025. (link)

7. Higher Education Inquirer, “The Hidden Costs of ROTC — and the Military Path,” November 28, 2025. (link)

8. Historical records on U.S. interventions: Mexican‑American War, Spanish‑American War, Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Argentina (1976–1983), El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela (2025).