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Friday, May 2, 2025

Trump’s War on Public Knowledge: The Dismantling of ERIC, the Gutting of IMLS, and the Erosion of Educational Access

When teachers search for lesson plans, parents look up school policies, or researchers investigate the American education system, many unknowingly rely on public infrastructure that makes this information accessible. One such pillar is ERIC—the Education Resources Information Center—a free, open-access archive of over 2.1 million education documents funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Another is the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which provides critical funding and research support to libraries and museums across the country.

Both are now under coordinated attack.

ERIC was set to stop updating after April 23. IMLS, the primary federal funding source for libraries and museums, is being gutted. The Trump administration has not only defunded these institutions—it’s dismantling the very structures that enable public access to knowledge, learning, and culture.

Coordinated Sabotage, Cloaked in Bureaucracy

ERIC’s shutdown is not due to budget shortfalls or Congressional gridlock. It’s a deliberate move by the administration, executed through a newly created bureaucratic entity called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Though Congress authorized ERIC’s funding through 2028, DOGE has blocked the release of those funds, rendering the program inoperable.

Meanwhile, IMLS is facing its own death by design. A recent executive order signed by President Trump calls for the elimination of IMLS “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law,” alongside six other small agencies. Staff were told that the agency would be “down to the studs,” with some projections suggesting the workforce will be cut from 75 employees to just 30—possibly transferring some to the Department of Labor. Remaining functions will be reduced to only what is legally required, hollowing out its ability to provide grants, support research, or shape policy.

“It’s devastating to the communities that we serve, the libraries and museums across this country,” one IMLS employee said.

Public Knowledge as Political Casualty

What connects ERIC and IMLS is their role in preserving and democratizing access to knowledge. ERIC is often called the education sector’s version of PubMed, a go-to source for peer-reviewed articles, gray literature, and independent research on American education. IMLS, with a $295 million annual budget, supports thousands of libraries and museums through grants and development initiatives, especially in underserved communities.

Their destruction is not a policy accident. It’s a political strategy.

“These cuts aren’t about trimming fat,” said Erin Pollard Young, former ERIC director who was terminated in a mass layoff of 1,300 education department employees. “They’re about eliminating sources of information that contradict the administration’s ideological narrative.”

ERIC’s gray literature includes unpublished reports and local school evaluations that expose hard truths about segregation, inequality, and failed corporate reforms. These aren’t easy to spin into culture war fodder—so instead, they’re buried.

From Starving Budgets to Shutting Doors

Pollard Young was ordered by DOGE to slash ERIC’s budget from $5.5 million to $2.25 million. Her plan included eliminating nearly half of ERIC’s journal coverage and absorbing duties from contractors. Even then, her revised budget proposal was summarily rejected with an email in all caps: “THIS IS NOT APPROVED.”

At IMLS, staff were given just days to apply for early retirement or incentive payments. Reduction in Force (RIF) notices are expected any day now, signaling the beginning of mass layoffs. The agency’s capacity to serve local libraries and cultural institutions is rapidly being dismantled.

The cumulative effect is clear: this administration is starving the nation’s knowledge infrastructure. Libraries. Research databases. Museums. Education grants. Anything that supports open inquiry and informed decision-making is being cut off at the source.

What’s Next? The Slow Death of Public Knowledge Infrastructure

ERIC and IMLS may only be the beginning.

If the Trump administration continues along this trajectory, other public knowledge databases could soon face similar attacks. Publicly funded resources like:

PubMed (biomedical literature)
NCES (National Center for Education Statistics)
NTIS (National Technical Information Service)
Data.gov (federal open data)
NASA’s Scientific and Technical Information Program
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

...could be hollowed out or shuttered under the guise of “efficiency.” These databases, often invisible to the public, power entire ecosystems of policy research, scientific discovery, journalism, and local decision-making. Their disappearance would leave a vacuum easily filled by misinformation, partisan spin, and corporate-sponsored content.

What’s at stake is the very infrastructure of truth.

The erosion of credible, accessible, and independent information sources is not just about education—it’s about the dismantling of informed citizenship. Without publicly funded, peer-reviewed, and historically reliable databases, Americans are left to sort through algorithmically curated noise, corporate propaganda, and ideological misinformation with no baseline for truth.

The result? A nation where facts are optional, history is rewritten, and the public sphere is reduced to echo chambers of power.

An Attack on Democracy Itself

The consequences extend far beyond research access. This is an attack on the civic institutions that uphold democracy. Without ERIC, schools and policymakers lose the ability to make evidence-based decisions. Without IMLS, libraries—often the only internet access point in rural and poor communities—will lose the support they need to stay open.

“Defunding ERIC would limit public access to critical education research,” said Gladys Cruz of AASA, The School Superintendents Association. “The same goes for IMLS. When you pull out the scaffolding of knowledge from public life, what remains is ideology, disinformation, and ignorance.”

The Department of Education has doubled down, attacking the Institute of Education Sciences (ERIC’s parent agency) as ineffective—standard operating procedure in this administration: discredit the institution, defund it, destroy it.

A Call to Resist

Pollard Young is risking retaliation by speaking out. “To me, it is important for the field to know that I am doing everything in my power to save ERIC,” she said. “And also for the country to understand what is happening.”

We should listen.

What we’re witnessing is a 21st-century form of authoritarianism—not through overt censorship alone, but through systematic erasure of public knowledge, carried out under the pretense of bureaucratic streamlining. The goal is to leave behind a nation with fewer tools to learn, less access to the truth, and more room for lies to grow.

ERIC and IMLS are more than databases or funding agencies. They are lifelines to knowledge, culture, and informed citizenship. Killing them isn’t just reckless.

It’s ideological.

And we ignore their dismantling at our peril.

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

US Department of Education Projects Increasing Higher Ed Enrollment From 2024-2030. Really? (Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee)

The US Department of Education (ED) continues to paint rosy projections about higher education enrollment despite harsh economic and demographic realities--and increasing skepticism about the value of college degrees.

Image from Digest of Education Statistics (2022)

Since 2011, higher education enrollment has declined every year--a more than decade long trend. The Covid pandemic of 2020 to 2022 made matters worse with domestic and foreign enrollment-- (temporarily) ameliorated by government bailouts and untested online education. Foreign enrollment continues to languish. And the enrollment cliff of 2026, a ripple effect of the 2008 Great Recession, is now just around the corner.

ED is projecting enrollment losses in 2022 and 2023, but why is it projecting enrollment gains from 2024 to 2030? Apparently, one of the problems is with old and faulty Census projections made during the Trump era that were not corrected.

Based on these Census numbers and other factors, the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) projects increases in high school graduation numbers. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher (WICHE), in contrast, projects declines in high school graduates starting about 2025. (see graph below).

For ED, relying on overly optimistic projections for high school graduates creates a statistical train wreck that's made even worse by what's not in their formula.

Popular opinion about college has been declining for years, and there is no indication that attitudes will improve. A growing number of younger folks have joined the "educated underclass," becoming disaffected by underemployment and oppressive student loan debt. While progressive policies could change attitudes, deep skepticism about the value of education is an important statistical wildcard.

This is not the first time that the Higher Education Inquirer has questioned overly optimistic US Department of Education projections. While NCES has updated projections from time to time, it seems to have relied too much on the past and been too slow to change.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

TOMORROW: "Are Working Class Voters Done with Democrats?" (CUNY School of Labor and Urban Stidies)

Click here to view as webpage

Fri. January 31 - in-person only @CUNYSLU

Are Working Class Voters Done with Democrats?

Class Dealignment & the Two Party System

Friday, January 31

1:30pm - 3:00pm

Free and open to all. Lunch will be served.

*In-person* only:

CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies

25 West 43rd Street, 18th floor, NYC 10036 (map )

slucuny.swoogo.com/31January2025

Why did so many working-class voters support Republicans over Democrats in the 2024 elections? Was the problem simply 'messaging', or have Democrats entrenched themselves as the party of corporate elites and Wall Street? What can Democrats do to win back this crucial demographic and how do we define (or re-define) the working-class? Will Democrats make a strong commitment to economic populism to reverse this class dealignment?

To delve into these questions join us for a conversation with Jared Abbott, director of the Center for Working Class Politics, and New Labor Forum Editor-at-Large Micah Uetricht. This program is a live recording for SLU’s podcast Reinventing Solidarity.

Wed. February 5 - virtual via Zoom

What’s at Stake for Labor:

Project 2025 and the Department of Government Efficiency

Wednesday, February 5

7:00pm - 8:30pm

Virtual event via Zoom webinar.

slucuny.swoogo.com/5February2025

Featured Speakers:

James Goodwin - Policy Director, Center for Progressive Reform

Diana Reddy - Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley Law

Arjun Singh - Senior Podcast Producer, The Lever

Moderated by Samir Sonti - Assistant Professor, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.

What are the real costs to bear on workers–especially civil service and public sector workers – with Project 2025 and the establishment of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency? What strategies can labor employ to counter this attack on working people and unions? How can looking back at previous far right policy projects help prepare us in our fight to protect workers? Join us to hear from law & policy experts and journalists as they discuss these urgent questions.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Trump’s War on Public Knowledge: The Dismantling of ERIC and the Erosion of Educational Access

When teachers search for help with lesson plans, parents look for answers on school policies, or researchers dig into the roots of America’s education system, many unknowingly rely on a public treasure: ERIC, the Education Resources Information Center. Behind nearly every meaningful Google result about U.S. education lies this carefully curated public database, an open-access archive of more than 2.1 million education documents funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

But this essential public good—free, accessible, nonpartisan—is now on the chopping block.

Unless something changes in the coming days, ERIC will stop being updated after April 23, marking the end of a 60-year-old institution that has helped educators, researchers, and policymakers base decisions on evidence, not ideology. The shutdown is not the result of budget shortfalls or Congressional gridlock. It’s a deliberate act of sabotage by the Trump administration, hiding behind the bland bureaucratic label of “efficiency.”

Dismantling by Design

ERIC has been a mainstay of U.S. education since the 1960s, originally distributed on microfiche and now operating as a seamless, open-access website used by 14 million people each year. Think of it as the education world’s PubMed—a foundational, publicly funded resource that supports millions of decisions in classrooms and boardrooms alike.

The platform is funded through a five-year contract set to run through 2028. But that contract is now functionally dead thanks to DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a newly created unit within the Trump Department of Education. Though Congress authorized the money, DOGE has refused to release it, effectively forcing ERIC into paralysis.

“After 60 years of gathering hard-to-find education literature and sharing it broadly, the website could stop being updated,” said Erin Pollard Young, the longtime Education Department staffer who oversaw ERIC until she was terminated in a mass layoff of more than 1,300 federal education employees in March.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t just about saving a database. This is about obliterating public access to knowledge—especially knowledge that challenges right-wing narratives about education in America.

The Anti-Intellectual Playbook

This is not an isolated incident. The Trump administration’s hostility toward public institutions, academic research, and intellectual labor has been a central feature of its governance. From banning diversity training to rewriting U.S. history standards, this White House has repeatedly attacked education systems that promote nuance, evidence, or inclusion.

ERIC is now the latest victim in a broader war on independent knowledge. It doesn’t just house peer-reviewed journal articles. It archives what’s known as gray literature—unpublished reports, independent studies, and school district evaluations that are often the only public record of how education really works in practice. These materials often tell inconvenient truths: about inequality, segregation, charter school corruption, and failed policies pushed by corporate reformers.

“Big, important RCTs [randomized controlled trials] are in white papers,” said Pollard Young. “Google and AI can’t replicate what ERIC does.”

But gray literature doesn’t fit neatly into Trumpworld’s political project. It can’t be weaponized into culture war talking points. And perhaps that’s why it’s being buried.

Defunding the Backbone of Evidence

Before being fired, Pollard Young was ordered by DOGE to cut ERIC’s budget nearly in half—from $5.5 million to $2.25 million—a demand she tried to meet, despite knowing the consequences. Forty-five percent of journals would have been removed from the indexing pipeline. The help desk would vanish. Pollard Young herself agreed to take over publisher outreach from contractors to keep the program alive.

Her plan was rejected with a single email in all caps: “THIS IS NOT APPROVED.” Then, silence.

“Without constant curation and updating, so much information will be lost,” she warned. And with her termination, ERIC has no federal steward left.

Make no mistake—ERIC is being suffocated, not because it failed, but because it succeeded too well. It made knowledge available to anyone with an internet connection. And for an administration that thrives on disinformation and division, that’s a threat.

Who Pays the Price?

Educators, researchers, and school leaders will lose the most. But the real tragedy is what this means for public education as a democratic institution. When vital information disappears or becomes inaccessible, it opens the door to policy based on myth and ideology, not reality.

“Defunding ERIC would limit public access to critical education research, hindering evidence-based practices and informed policy decisions,” said Gladys Cruz, past president of the AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

The Department of Education responded not with a defense of ERIC, but with a political attack on its parent agency, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). A spokesperson claimed IES has “failed to effectively fulfill its mandate,” echoing the administration’s now-familiar strategy: discredit the institution, defund it, then destroy it.

An Urgent Call to Action

Pollard Young, who is still technically on administrative leave, has chosen to speak out, risking retaliation from a vindictive administration to warn the public.

“To me, it is important for the field to know that I am doing everything in my power to save ERIC,” she said. “And also for the country to understand what is happening.”

We should listen.

ERIC is more than a database—it’s a record of our educational history, a safeguard against ignorance, and a tool for building a more equitable future. Killing it isn’t just reckless. It’s ideological.

This is what authoritarianism looks like in the 21st century. Not just book bans and curriculum gag orders, but the slow, quiet erasure of public knowledge—done in the name of “efficiency,” while the lights go out on truth.

Friday, September 29, 2023

2U-edX crash exposes the latest wave of edugrift

2U, a Lanham, Maryland-based edtech company and parent company edX, is facing layoffs of an estimated 200 to 400 workers--a significant number for a company that only employs a few thousand--amid more rumors that the company is for sale. While the pain of their firings may be consequential for those who are experiencing it, the pain of those the company has damaged, mostly striving middle-class consumers and their families, may be worse.

2U's problems are not new. The Higher Education Inquirer first reported on the beginning of company's meltdown in October 2019. In July 2022, 2U announced layoffs as it changed its business model (again) and the US Department of Education scrutinized the company's grad school offerings.

2U began in 2008 as an online program manager (OPM), one of a few companies offering edtech services that required large amounts of capital and labor costs. They expanded through the acquisition of other edtech firms, Trilogy Education Services (2019) and edX (2021). edX is an education platform that was created by Harvard and MIT as a massive open online course (MOOC) platform, but as part of 2U now concentrates on selling a number of elite and brand name tech bootcamps.

In 2022 and 2023, the Wall Street Journal (Lisa Bannon), Chronicle of Higher Education (Mike Vasquez), and USA Today (Chris Quintana) investigated 2U after a few US senators sounded the alarm about consumers being fleeced by 2U and other OPMs.

With 2U's reputation in shambles and layoffs ahead, the parent company wrapped itself around the more respectable edX brand. Bjju's, an Indian edtech firm, was said to be looking at 2U or Chegg as a possible acquisition (Byju's is now facing its own problems).

Concentrating on growth for years, then acquisition, then consolidation and rebranding, 2U has never generated an annual profit--and that trend doesn't appear to be changing.

Earlier this year we listed 2U, Chegg, Coursera, and Guild Education as part of the EdTech Meltdown.

Unlike the prior wave of for-profit college failures of Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, Education Management Corporation, and others that hurt working-class student debtors, 2U has collaborated with elite universities, targeting mostly middle-class folks for advanced degrees and certificates with elite brand names such as USC and UC Berkeley. Credentials that frequently are not worth the debt. Credentials that often did not lead to better paying jobs. Credentials that burden (and sometimes crush) consumers financially with private loans from Sallie Mae and others.

edX's website advertises coding, data analytics, cybersecurity, and AI bootcamps from a number of name brands: Ohio State University, Columbia University, University of Texas, Harvard University, Michigan State University, University of Denver, Southern Methodist University, University of Minnesota, University of Central Florida, Arizona State University, Northwestern University, Rice University, the University of North Carolina, and UC-Irvine.

Ohio State University AI Bootcamp $11,745
University of Texas Coding Bootcamp $12,495
Berkeley Extension Coding Bootcamp $13,495
University of Pennsylvania Cybersecurity Bootcamp $13,995
Columbia University Data Analytics Bootcamp $14,745

It's not clear how well managed the programs are and how much these schools are involved in instruction and career guidance. However, edX claims that with their bootcamp certificates, graduates will "gain access to more than 260 employers--including half of the Fortune 100--seeking skilled bootcamp graduates."

While the targets of for-profit colleges and 2U may have been different, their approaches were similar: sell a dream to consumers that often does not materialize. Spend tens of millions on targeted (and sometimes misleading) advertising and enrollment. Keep the confidence game going as long as it will last. But that may not be much longer.

In April 2023, 2U filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Education to avoid further government oversight. A familiar defensive strategy in the for-profit college business.

There is much we don't know about how significant the damage has been to those who bought the 2U story and spent tens of thousands on elite degrees and certificates, but it must be significant. Most US families do not have that kind of money to spend on something that doesn't result in financial gains.

Recent reviews of edX on TrustPilot have been scathing. And social media have been brutal on 2U, Trilogy, and EdX. Reddit, for example, has posts like "The dirty truth about edX/Trilogy Boot Camps." In a more recent post about edX, there was a flurry of negative reviews.

In 2016, we wrote "When college choice is a fraud." At that time we were focusing on the tough choices that working-class people have deciding between their local community college or a for-profit career school. Little did we know that the education business was already moving its way up the food chain and that edtech companies like 2U would be engaging in the latest form of edugrift.

Thursday, October 15, 2020

The College Dream is Over (Gary Roth*)

For the last decade already, access to a college education has been shrinking. This is unprecedented for the United States, in which expanding access has always presupposed that enrollments grow faster than population. This has been true in all but a handful of years ever since annual data were compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau. During the major expansion of higher education during the 1950s and 60s -- when for the first time large numbers of students from working class backgrounds entered the collegiate system, college enrollments outpaced population by a factor of eight. Even as recently as the first decade of this century, enrollments increased four times faster than population growth. The current crisis began in 2010, with enrollments expected to remain flat for another ten years or more, even though the population continues to grow.[i] The college educated will shrink as a portion of the population at large.

If access is declining, so too are the chances for upward mobility. The future has narrowed. Stagnant enrollments put into reverse some of the signature accomplishments upon which the educational community and the nation at large have prided themselves. Two groups in particular have been hit hard. Much attention has been given to the decline in black student enrollment, generally attributable to a rollback of affirmative action policies and a pronounced increase in racist incidents. Less noticed has been the decline in white student participation, which has fallen by a similar percent over the last decade.[ii] For both black people and white people, access is shrinking.

This decline compounds the difficulties which college graduates already face. Since the early 1990s, one-third of the graduates with bachelor’s degrees have found themselves in jobs for which a college education is not necessary.[iii] Here too, upward mobility in terms of the types of work available, compensation, and possible career paths forward has been foreclosed. This in turn produces a ripple effect on everyone without a four-year degree. The underemployed college graduates crowd into employment fields that they had hoped to avoid, which in turn exerts downward pressure on wages across the board. If college attendance was once motivated by the desire to get ahead and improve one’s circumstances, it has increasing become a negative motivation. You go to college in order to avoid the even-more difficult fates that await those with less schooling.

The dream of education as a lever of social transformation is over. This dream was never fully grounded in reality anyway, but whatever it stood for in the past no longer fits the current situation. Collegiate institutions have become temporary warehouses for the children of the middle and working classes. Graduation dumps them into an economic cul-de-sac in which appropriate jobs are lacking. Student debt makes this situation all the more disturbing. Since the pandemic, even underemployment has begun to look good, so scarce have jobs become. Richard Fariña’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (1966) takes on a new poignancy.

[i] Annual enrollment data begins in 1947; U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics, Table 303.10 (2019). For population 1790-1930: U.S. Census Bureau, Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, A 6-7; for population 1940-2020: U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Censuses.

[ii] Between the peak year of enrollment in 2010 and 2018, black student enrollment declined by 18%, while white student enrollment declined by 19%; U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics, Table 306.10 (2019). Also see: Ben Miller, ‘It’s Time to Worry About College Enrollment Declines Among Black Students’, 28 September 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecondary/reports/2020/09/28/490838/time-worry-college-enrollment-declines-among-black-students/; Kevin Carey, ‘A Detailed Look at the Downside of California’s Ban on Affirmative Action’, The New York Times, 21 August 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/upshot/00up-affirmative-action-california-study.html.

[iii] Federal Reserve Bank of New York, ‘The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates: Underemployment’, 17 July 2020, https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market/college-labor-market_underemployment_rates.html.

*Gary Roth is the author of "The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility."

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Corruption, Fraud and Scandal at Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD Whistleblower)

During the weekend of May 16-19, 2025, the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center – IndyBay which operates as open platform news source against injustice, scrubbed two years of news articles ranging from May 2023 – May 2025.

The focus of these articles was corruption, fraud and scandal in the Los Angeles Community College District, primarily at Los Angeles Valley College’s Media Arts Department.

A few of these articles summarized.

Erika Endrijonas faces new questions in LACCD fraud | May 2, 2023 |

Pasadena City College President-Superintendent Erika Endrijonas being fired from the institution and trying to get a job at Santa Barbara City College, Mt. SAC, and Los Angeles City College. Endrijonas had been subjected to a vote of no confidence by the Pasadena Academic Senate, Pasadena Full-Time Faculty Union, protests by Part-Time Faculty, and finally the vote to reduce her contract by the newly elected board of trustees.

The article dived into Endrijonas’s tenure at her previous institution – Los Angeles Valley College. Endrijonas was announced in her new role at PCC in December 2018, the same week that a jury in Van Nuys awarded a former LAVC employee $2.9 million jury award for illegal retaliation and abuse. A few months earlier, the Los Angeles Times published a major story about the Valley Academic and Cultural Center – a project meant to be Endrijonas’s crowning achievement – being an alleged massive racketeering scheme.

Further it documented the Media Arts Department the VACC would house had a lengthy history of lawsuits and accreditation complaints against the faculty for not providing the education and training advertised – negating the need for the new building. The building’s approval vote happened in August 2016, the lawsuit happened in 2009, and the Accreditation Complaints happened in June 2016.

Dozen LAVC Cinema Students Narratives challenge Erika Endrijonas’s LACCD Success Story | May 5, 2023 |

This article covered a release of an email thread from a dozen students in 2016 that was ultimately sent to the Accreditation Commission for Junior and Community Colleges in 2016, substantiating that there was widespread fraud in the department. Classes were not scheduled by Department Chair Eric Swelstad, training was not provided, labs were not held, etc . . .

Van Nuys/Los Angeles College Screenwriting Professor Faked Writer’s Guild Membership | May 17, 2023 |

Revealed that LAVC Media Arts Department Chair Eric Swelstad faked his membership in the Writer’s Guild of America – West, and then used it in multiple professional bios.

Los Angeles Valley College perpetuated wage theft against students on Julie Su’s watch | May 19, 2023 |

Documented how Grant Director Dan Watanabe engaged in wage theft against students for two years from 2013 – 2016.

Two Los Angeles Film Professors Bilked Taxpayers Over $3.5 Million Dollars | May 21, 2023 |

Described how LAVC Media Arts Department Founder Joseph Dacursso’s retirement first as Department Chair, then as a full-time faculty in 2012, left Department Chair Eric Swelstad and Arantxa Rodriguez to engage in petty infighting and squabbling that spilled over into scheduling decisions. In short, two faculty members collected six-figure-salaries while putting students in the middle of department in-fighting.

LAVC Omsbudsman Stalked Whistleblowers | August 8, 2023 |

Described how LAVC’s Dean of Students, Annie G. Reed (Goldman) retaliated and stalked students that went to Accreditation, going as far as running a smear campaign that one of them was a potential school shooter. Worse, she began stalking him after he left school – including on social media.

[Image: Annie G. Reed Goldman, Dean of Labor and HR at LACCD]

Further articles questioned where Academic Degrees were given out to students who had not completed Academic classes and criteria, the role of Jo Ann Rivas turned YouTube Personality ‘AuditLA’ who was on the Los Angeles Valley College Citizen’s Building Oversight Committee, whether a number of students with falsified resumes received payments from a Grant as ‘Professional Experts’ etc . . .

The scrubbing of these articles coincided with the formal appointment of Alberto J. Roman as the new Chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, following the retirement of disgraced administrator Francisco Rodriguez.

It also came with the publication of two final articles. One about Annie G. Reed’s being named as a Defendant in a lawsuit by former faculty at Los Angeles City College, who came to her about an administrator engaging in illegal behavior – including planting drugs on employees to get them fired.

The second article, probed Los Angeles Valley College Department Chair, Eric Swelstad’s professional bio again and provided evidence that he repeatedly lied and engaged in deceptive advertising and practices for two decades. It provided students who held loans with information about student borrower defenses.

The censorship also came months after Jo Ann Rivas aka AuditLA, herself probed by the articles, launched a barrage of attacks for about a week in January about a former student who had grievance's against the school. Rivas had previously engaged in a similar barrage in July 2020.

This was not the first time that an attempt was made to censor this news stream.

In 2020, an attempt was made to hack the community news feed account on Twitter/X.com @LACCDW. Then a week before the LACCD Board of Trustees election in November 2020, Twitter suspended the community newsfeed altogether. It was only restored two years later after Twitter's sale and the re-evaluation of previous suspended accounts.

In a final update – The Valley Academic and Cultural Center, despite having a 2018 completion date, remains unfinished. According to minutes of the LAVC Work Environment Committee Minutes from 2025-05-08;

“The Valley Academic and Cultural Center (VACC) is as of Friday, May 8th, about 80% complete. They are still patching the roof. There are still some critical items like stage protection net.”

Friday, November 15, 2024

Seeking Whistleblowers in Higher Education

The Higher Education Inquirer is seeking whistleblowers who can tell us what is happening in higher education as the Trump Administration takes control over the federal government. The information needs to be reliable and credible. Leads are fine, but verifiable documents are better.

We are particularly interested in obtaining information related to the US Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense, Department of Labor, the Federal Trade Commission, and other agencies related to higher education and employment.

We are also interested in those involved in higher education administration and finance, particularly at elite universities and state flagship universities. With a few exceptions, we expect university presidents at elite universities to stay quiet, clamp down further on dissent and fall in line with any new policies, as the threat to tax them at higher rates becomes a concern.

In the past we have relied heavily on Freedom of Information Act requests, which often take months, and multiple efforts, to obtain important data. Sometimes the information is delayed for years or never comes. And right now, we can't afford to wait.

Since 2016, HEI has recruited a number of courageous people for inside information about for-profit colleges. This has included informants from the University of Phoenix, Ashford University (aka University of Arizona Global), and Kaplan University (aka Purdue University Global) and the lead generators they schools have hired.

We have also communicated with people associated with online program managers, such as 2U and Academic Partnerships.

All of this information has been helpful in exposing the back rooms of the higher education business.

Now, more than ever, we need information that folks won't find anytime soon in other news outlets. News that workers, consumers, and their families can use to make better decisions about their life choices.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

HEI Resources

[Updated January 8, 2023)

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