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Monday, December 1, 2025
Trump's new housing policies could push another 170,000 people into homelessness (National Low Income Housing Coalition)
Friday, November 28, 2025
The Hidden Costs of ROTC — and the Military Path: Why Prospective Enlistees and Supporters Should Think Twice
This episode is striking not only because of Kelly’s prominence, but because it shows how even after leaving active service, a veteran’s speech and actions can be subject to military law — a stark reminder that joining the military (or training through ROTC) can carry obligations and consequences long after “service” ends.
Moral, Legal & Personal Risks Behind the Promise
When you consider military service — through ROTC or otherwise — it’s important to weigh the full scope of what you may be signing up for:
Potential involvement in illegal or immoral wars: ROTC graduates may eventually be deployed in foreign conflicts — possibly ones controversial or condemned internationally (for example, interventions in places like Venezuela). Participation in such wars raises real moral questions about complicity in human rights abuses, “regime-change,” or other interventions that may lack democratic or legal legitimacy.
Domestic deployment and policing: Military obligations are increasingly stretching beyond foreign wars. Service members — even reservists — can be called in to deal with domestic “disputes,” civil unrest, or internal security operations. This raises ethical concerns about policing one’s own communities, and potential coercion or suppression of civil and political rights.
Long-term oversight and limited freedom: The investigation of Senator Kelly shows that veterans and officers remain under DoD jurisdiction even after service ends. That oversight can restrict free speech, dissent, or political engagement. Those seeking to escape economic hardship or limited opportunities may overlook how binding and enduring those obligations can be — even decades later.
Psychological and bodily danger: Military service often involves exposure to combat, trauma, physical injury — not to mention risks such as sexual assault, racism, sexism, and institutional abuse. Mental health consequences like PTSD are common, and the support systems for dealing with them are widely criticized as inadequate.
Institutional racism, sexism, and inequality: The military is an institution with historic and ongoing patterns of discrimination — which can exacerbate systemic injustices rather than alleviate them. For individuals coming from marginalized communities, the promise of “a way out” can come with new forms of structural violence, exploitation, or marginalization.
Career precarity and institutional control: Even after completing education or training, the reality of “limited choices” looms large. Military obligations — contractual, legal, social — can bind individuals long-term, affecting not just their mobility but their agency, conscience, and ability to critique the system.
Why Economic Incentives Often Mask the Real Costs
For many, the draw of ROTC is economic: scholarships, stable income, a way out of challenging socioeconomic circumstances, or a ticket out of a hometown with limited opportunity. These incentives are real. But as the recent case with Mark Kelly makes clear, the costs — legal, moral, social — can be far greater and more enduring than advertised. What looks like an escape route can become a lifetime of obligations, constraints, and potential complicity in questionable policies.
A Call for Caution, Conscience, and Awareness
Prospective enlistees deserve full transparency. The decision to join ROTC or the military should not be sold merely as an educational contract or a job opportunity — it is an entrance into a deeply entrenched institution, one with power, obligations, and potential for harm. The new controversy around Mark Kelly ought to serve as a wake-up call: if even a decorated former officer and sitting U.S. senator can be threatened decades after service, young people should consider carefully what they may be signing up for.
If you — or someone you care about — is thinking of joining, ask: What kind of wars might I be asked to fight? What does “service” really cost — and who pays?
Sources:
The Guardian. “Mark Kelly: call for troops to disobey illegal orders is 'non-controversial'.” November 25, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/25/mark-kelly-troops-disobey-illegal-orders-comments
Reuters. “Pentagon threatens to prosecute Senator Mark Kelly by recalling him to Navy service.” November 24, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-threatens-prosecute-senator-mark-kelly-by-recalling-him-navy-service-2025-11-24/
RAND Corporation. “Mental Health and Military Service.” 2022.
Amnesty International. Human Rights Violations in Venezuela. 2023.
U.S. Department of Defense. Reports on Sexual Assault in the Military. 2024.
Washington, H. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Human Experimentation in the United States.
Rosenthal, E. An American Sickness.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis—and Why HUD’s New Cuts Will Make It Worse
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has quietly announced one of the most drastic federal rollbacks in homelessness policy in decades: a massive cut to permanent housing under the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, with more than half of its 2026 funding diverted to transitional housing and compliance-based services. HUD’s own internal estimates warn that up to 170,000 people could lose housing as a result of the shift. For millions of Americans, especially those on the margins, this is not a policy adjustment; it is the beginning of a humanitarian disaster.
To understand how we arrived here, it is not enough to point at the Trump administration, the ideological crusade against “Housing First,” or the White House Faith Office now shaping federal grantmaking. One must also examine the educated neoliberals who built and normalized the system that made this possible.
HUD’s policy change overturns decades of federal commitment to permanent supportive housing, an evidence-backed model that dramatically reduces chronic homelessness. The new Notice of Funding Opportunity caps permanent housing at just 30 percent of CoC dollars, down from 87 percent in prior years, while the remainder is funneled toward transitional housing, work or service requirements, mandatory treatment, and faith-based compliance programs. The total funding for 2026 is roughly $3.9 billion across 7,000 grants. That amount, spread across hundreds of thousands of people experiencing homelessness, is barely sufficient to provide minimal assistance, let alone stable housing or the comprehensive services this population needs. One-third of existing programs will run out of funds before the new awards are issued in May, leaving vulnerable individuals exposed to eviction during the harshest months of winter. Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness and a former HUD official, described the rollout as deeply irresponsible, warning that the administration is setting communities up for failure.
For decades, U.S. policy has been shaped not just by conservatives but also by a sprawling class of highly educated managers: MBAs, MPPs, JDs, think-tank fellows, foundation executives, nonprofit administrators, and “innovation” consultants. They came from America’s elite universities, fluent in market logic, managerialism, and austerity politics. They preached efficiency, accountability, metrics, and self-sufficiency. Many also personally accumulated wealth, often owning multiple homes, benefiting from investment income, and exploiting loopholes to minimize or avoid taxes. Meanwhile, the programs they manage shrink support for the poor and vulnerable.
Through their influence, housing became a program, not a public good. Public housing construction largely disappeared, replaced by a grant-driven, nonprofit marketplace controlled by elite professionals. Even the funding allocated for CoC programs, though nominally in the billions, is deliberately minimal. This scarcity forces competition, instability, and suffering among poor people. Nonprofit executives, most of whom depend on federal contracts and foundation dollars, rarely challenge the economic and political structures that produce homelessness. Accountability rhetoric replaced structural change, reframing homelessness as an issue of individual behavior rather than a systemic failure. The academy normalized the idea that poor people should suffer, teaching a generation of managers to prioritize markets, metrics, and “innovation” over human need. This bipartisan, university-trained professional class laid the foundation for the HUD cuts now threatening hundreds of thousands of lives.
HUD argues that the new model “restores accountability” and reduces the purported waste of Housing First, but decades of research contradict that claim. Permanent supportive housing reduces chronic homelessness, lowers emergency and policing costs, stabilizes people with disabilities, and is cheaper than institutionalization or shelters. Transitional housing with mandatory compliance, on the other hand, repeatedly pushes people back to the streets, disproportionately harms people with disabilities, increases mortality, inflates administrative costs, and creates churn rather than stability. The policy is not a mistake; it reflects the calculated priorities of an elite managerial class whose worldview demands austerity for the poor while allowing them to flourish materially.
The response in Washington has been striking. Forty-two Senate Democrats warned HUD that the shift violates the McKinney-Vento Act, undermines local decision-making, and rejects decades of federally funded research. Even twenty House Republicans urged careful implementation to avoid destabilizing services for seniors and disabled people. Yet decades of neoliberal policymaking—funded and legitimized by universities, foundations, and think tanks—have already created a system in which poverty and suffering are baked into federal policy. This latest HUD action simply codifies that worldview.
The crisis unfolding now is not just the product of Trump’s ideological war on Housing First. It is the logical endpoint of decades of privatization, the erosion of public housing, elite consensus around austerity, credentialed managerialism, the nonprofit-industrial complex, the foundation-university revolving door, and the belief—deeply embedded in higher education—that markets and metrics should govern everything. Many of these policymakers and nonprofit executives own multiple homes, refuse to pay taxes, and structure federal policy to ensure the poor remain dependent, unstable, and suffering. The people most directly harmed are those with the least political power: disabled people, elderly tenants, veterans, people with serious mental illness, women fleeing violence, and families trying to survive an economy that no longer works for them. Behind them stands a class of educated neoliberals who built the systems that made this outcome possible, often congratulating themselves for “innovation” while allowing misery to proliferate. This is not failure. This is design.
Sources:
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Politico, “HUD to Cut Permanent Housing Funding for Homeless Programs,” 2025.
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National Alliance to End Homelessness, internal HUD funding documents, 2025.
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Ann Oliva, National Alliance to End Homelessness, statements to POLITICO, 2025.
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McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, 1987.
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HUD Notice of Funding Opportunity, 2026 Continuum of Care Program.
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Executive Order: “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” White House, 2025.
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Divestment from Predatory Education Stocks: A Moral Imperative
Calls for divestment from exploitative industries have long been part of movements for social and economic justice—whether opposing apartheid, fossil fuels, or private prisons. Today, another sector demands moral scrutiny: the network of for-profit education corporations and student loan servicers that have turned higher learning into a site of mass indebtedness and despair. From predatory colleges to the companies that profit from collecting on student debt, the system functions as a pipeline of extraction. For those who believe education should serve the public good, the issue is not merely financial—it is moral.
The Human Cost of Predatory Education
For decades, for-profit college chains such as Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, the University of Phoenix, DeVry, and Capella targeted low-income students, veterans, single parents, and people of color with high-pressure marketing and promises of career advancement. These institutions, funded primarily through federal student aid, often charged premium tuition for substandard programs that left graduates worse off than when they began.
When Corinthian and ITT Tech collapsed, they left hundreds of thousands of students with worthless credits and mountains of debt. But the collapse did not end the exploitation—it simply shifted it. The business model has re-emerged in online form through education technology and “online program management” (OPM) firms such as 2U, Coursera, and Academic Partnerships. These firms, in partnership with elite universities like Harvard, Yale, and USC, replicate the same dynamics of inflated costs, opaque contracts, and limited accountability.
The Servicing of Debt as a Business Model
Beyond the schools themselves, student loan servicers and collectors—Maximus, Sallie Mae, and Navient among them—have built immense profits from managing and pursuing student debt. Sallie Mae, once a government-sponsored enterprise, was privatized in the 2000s and evolved into a powerful lender and loan securitizer. Navient, its spinoff, became notorious for deceptive practices and aggressive collections that trapped borrowers in cycles of delinquency.
Maximus, a major federal contractor, now services defaulted student loans on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education. These companies profit directly from the misery of borrowers—many of whom are victims of predatory schools or structural inequality. Their incentive is not to liberate students from debt, but to sustain and expand it.
The Role of Institutional Investors
The complicity of institutional investors cannot be ignored. Pension funds, endowments, and major asset managers have consistently financed both for-profit colleges and loan servicers, even after repeated scandals and lawsuits. Public sector pension funds—ironically funded by educators—have held stock in Navient, Maximus, and large for-profit college operators. Endowments that pride themselves on ethical or ESG investing have too often overlooked education profiteering.
Investment firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street collectively hold billions of dollars in these companies, stabilizing an industry that thrives on the financial vulnerability of students. To profit from predatory education is to participate, however indirectly, in the commodification of aspiration.
Divestment as a Moral and Educational Act
Divesting from predatory education companies and loan servicers is not just an act of conscience—it is an educational statement in itself. It affirms that learning should be a vehicle for liberation, not a mechanism of debt servitude. When universities, pension boards, and faith-based investors divest from corporations like Maximus, Navient, and 2U, they are reclaiming education’s moral purpose.
The divestment movement offers a broader civic lesson: that profit and progress are not synonymous, and that investment must align with justice. Faith communities, student debt activists, and labor unions have made similar stands before—against apartheid, tobacco, and fossil fuels. The same principle applies here. An enterprise that depends on deception, coercion, and financial harm has no place in a socially responsible portfolio.
A Call to Action
Transparency is essential. Pension boards, university endowments, and foundations must disclose their holdings in for-profit education and student loan servicing companies. Independent investigations should assess the human consequences of these investments, particularly their disproportionate impact on women, veterans, and people of color.
The next step is moral divestment. Educational institutions, public pension systems, and religious organizations should commit to withdrawing investments from predatory education stocks and debt servicers. Funds should be redirected to debt relief, community college programs, and initiatives that restore trust in education as a public good.
The corporate education complex—spanning recruitment, instruction, lending, and collection—has monetized both hope and hardship. The time has come to sever public and institutional complicity in this cycle. Education should empower, not impoverish. Divestment is not merely symbolic—it is a declaration of values, a demand for accountability, and a reaffirmation of education’s original promise: to serve humanity rather than exploit it.
Sources:
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U.S. Department of Education, Borrower Defense to Repayment Reports
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Senate HELP Committee, For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success (2012)
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) enforcement actions against Navient and Sallie Mae
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The Century Foundation, Online Program Managers and the Public Interest
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Student Borrower Protection Center, Profiting from Pain: The Financialization of the Student Debt Crisis
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Higher Education Inquirer archives
Tuesday, November 4, 2025
When Was Higher Education Truly a Public Good? (Glen McGhee)
The notion that American higher education was ever a true public good is largely a myth. From the colonial colleges to the neoliberal university of today, higher education has functioned primarily as a mechanism of class reproduction and elite consolidation—with one brief, historically anomalous exception during the Cold War.
Colonial Roots: Elite Reproduction in the New World (1636–1787)
The first American colleges—Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, and a handful of others—were founded not for the benefit of the public, but to serve narrow elite interests. Their stated missions were to train Protestant clergy and prepare the sons of wealthy white families for leadership. They operated under monopoly charters and drew funding from landowners, merchants, and slave traders.
Elihu Yale, namesake of Yale University, derived wealth from his commercial ties to the East India Company and the slave trade. Harvard’s early trustees owned enslaved people. These institutions functioned as “old boys’ clubs,” perpetuating privilege rather than promoting equality. Their educational mission was to cultivate “gentlemen fit to govern,” not citizens of a democracy.
Private Enterprise in the Republic (1790–1860)
After independence, the number of colleges exploded—from 19 in 1790 to more than 800 by 1880—but not because of any commitment to the public good. Colleges became tools for two private interests: religious denominations seeking influence, and land speculators eager to raise property values.
Ministers often doubled as land dealers, founding small, parochial colleges to anchor towns and boost prices. State governments played a minimal role, providing funding only in times of crisis. The Supreme Court’s 1819 Dartmouth College decision enshrined institutional autonomy, shielding private colleges from state interference. Even state universities were created mainly out of interstate competition—every state needed its own to “keep up with its neighbors.”
Gilded Age and Progressive Era: Credential Capitalism (1880–1940)
By the late 19th century, industrial capitalism had transformed higher education into a private good—something purchased for individual advancement. As family farms and small businesses disappeared, college credentials became the ticket to white-collar respectability.
Sociologist Burton Bledstein called this the “culture of professionalism.” Families invested in degrees to secure middle-class futures for their children. By the 1920s, most students attended college not to seek enlightenment, but “to get ready for a particular job.”
Elite universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton solidified their dominance through exclusive networks. C. Wright Mills later observed that America’s “power elite” circulated through these same institutions and their associated clubs. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital helps explain this continuity: elite universities convert inherited privilege into certified merit, preserving hierarchy under the guise of meritocracy.
The Morrill Acts: Public Promise, Private Gains (1862–1890)
The Morrill Act of 1862 established land-grant colleges to promote “practical education” in agriculture and engineering. While often cited as a triumph of public-minded policy, the act’s legacy is ambivalent.
Land-grant universities were built on land expropriated from Indigenous peoples—often without compensation—and the 1890 Morrill Act entrenched segregation by mandating separate institutions for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. Even as these colleges expanded access for white working-class men, they simultaneously reinforced racial and economic hierarchies.
Cold War Universities: The Brief Public Good (1940–1970)
For roughly thirty years, during World War II and the Cold War, American universities functioned as genuine public goods—but only because national survival seemed to depend on them.
The GI Bill opened college to millions of veterans, stabilizing the economy and expanding the middle class. Massive federal investments in research transformed universities into engines of technological and scientific innovation. The university, for a moment, was understood as a public instrument for national progress.
Yet this golden age was marred by exclusion. Black veterans were often denied GI Bill benefits, particularly in the South, where discriminatory admissions and housing policies blocked their participation. The “military-industrial-academic complex” that emerged from wartime funding created a new elite network centered on research universities like MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley.
Neoliberal Regression: Education as a Private Commodity (1980–Present)
After 1970, the system reverted to its long-standing norm: higher education as a private good. The Cold War’s end, the tax revolt, and the rise of neoliberal ideology dismantled the postwar consensus.
Ronald Reagan led the charge—first as California governor, cutting higher education funding by 20%, then as president, slashing federal support. He argued that tuition should replace public subsidies, casting education as an individual investment rather than a social right.
Since 1980, state funding per student has fallen sharply while tuition at public universities has tripled. Students are now treated as “customers,” and universities as corporations—complete with branding departments, executive pay packages, and relentless tuition hikes.
The Circuit of Elite Network Capital
Today, the benefits of higher education flow through a closed circuit of power that links elite universities, corporations, government agencies, and wealthy families.
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Elite Universities consolidate wealth and prestige through research funding, patents, and endowments.
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Corporations recruit talent and license discoveries, feeding the same institutions that produce their executives.
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Government and Military Agencies are staffed by alumni of elite universities, reinforcing a revolving door of privilege.
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Elite Professions—law, medicine, finance, consulting—use degrees as gatekeeping mechanisms, driving credential inflation.
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Wealthy Families invest in elite education as a means of preserving status across generations.
What the public receives are only residual benefits—technologies and medical innovations that remain inaccessible without money or insurance.
Elite Network Capital, Not Public Good
The idea of higher education as a public good has always been more myth than reality. For most of American history, colleges and universities have functioned as institutions of elite reproduction, not engines of democratic uplift.
Only during the extraordinary conditions of the mid-20th century—when global war and ideological conflict made mass education a national imperative—did higher education briefly align with the public interest.
Today’s universities continue to speak the language of “public good,” but their actions reveal a different truth. They serve as factories of credentialism and as nodes in an elite network that translates privilege into prestige. What masquerades as a public good is, in practice, elite network capital—a system designed not to democratize opportunity, but to manage and legitimize inequality.
Sources:
Labaree (2017), Bledstein (1976), Bourdieu (1984, 1986), Mills (1956), Geiger (2015), Thelin (2019), and McGhee (2025).
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
BORROWERS AGAINST APOLLO EVENT, FRIDAY NOVEMBER 7TH, NEW YORK CITY (HELU, AAUP, AFT)
[Editor's Note: Readers can sign up for the event at BORROWERS AGAINST APOLLO. Ensure that you click on "Switch account" to submit the form from your Google account.]
WHO: American Association of University Professors (AAUP), NYU AAUP, Higher Ed Labor Union (HELU), The Professional Staff Congress- City University of New York (PSC-CUNY), NY Metro Coalition for Higher Ed, Sunrise Movement, Hands Off NYC, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, and student loan borrowers.
WHEN: Friday - November 7 at 11AM
LOCATION: Apollo Global Headquarters - 9 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
QUESTIONS? ApolloAction25@gmail.com
Several higher education unions, student unions, and former students of for-profit colleges are organizing in opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed “higher education compact”—a plan heavily shaped and promoted by private-equity billionaire Marc Rowan.
Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management, has played a central role in advancing this proposal. Apollo owns several predatory for-profit institutions, including the University of Phoenix, one of the most notorious offenders in the industry.
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Rowan took public credit for the compact, writing:
“The evidence is overwhelming: outrageous costs and prolonged indebtedness for students; poor outcomes, with too many students left unable to find meaningful work after graduating…”
Yet, under Rowan’s leadership, the University of Phoenix has become the largest source of Borrower Defense claims of any for-profit school, with more than 100,000 pending applications as of July 2025. Borrower Defense is a federal protection that allows students to seek loan forgiveness if their school misled them or violated state or federal law.
The University of Phoenix has faced multiple law enforcement investigations for deceptive recruiting tactics that targeted veterans, service members, and working adults nationwide. The school’s misconduct led to a $191 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for falsely claiming partnerships with major employers. More recently, the university attempted to portray itself as a public institution while seeking to sell to two states—both of which ultimately rejected the deal after public backlash.
While Rowan’s personal fortune exceeds $7 billion, borrowers continue to shoulder crushing debt from degrees that delivered little to no value. His leadership has fueled a system that profits from student harm—and now, through this compact, he is setting his sights on reshaping major public universities.
We refuse to stay silent. Borrowers, students, and educators are standing together to demand accountability and defend higher education from predatory perpetrators.
The for-profit college industry has harmed countless students — and it’s time they hear directly from us. Join us outside Apollo Global Management Headquarters on Friday, November 7 at 11:00 a.m. to make your voice heard and demand accountability.
We’re calling on borrowers from for-profit schools who were misled or left in debt by this predatory system. Travel support may be available for anyone within train distance of New York City. We’ll provide shirts, posters, and everything you need to show up strong. (Apollo’s offices are about 20 minutes from Penn Station by subway.)
We’re also looking for University of Phoenix borrowers willing to speak publicly or to the press about their experiences. Additional travel assistance can be arranged for those coming from outside the NYC area.
If you’re ready to share your story and take a stand, reach out today. Together, we can show Apollo — and the entire for-profit college industry — that borrowers are not backing down.
Thursday, September 18, 2025
Education Dept. Accused of Blocking Student Loan Forgiveness: A Systemic Failure
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has filed an amended complaint against the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary Linda McMahon, seeking class action status on behalf of millions of borrowers. The lawsuit alleges that the Department is unlawfully delaying or denying student loan forgiveness under income-driven repayment (IDR) and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
On paper, this is a fight about administrative backlogs and program freezes. In reality, it exposes how the U.S. higher education system continues to operate as a debt trap, where promises of relief are routinely broken, and working families are forced to subsidize a predatory credential economy.
Debt as a Business Model
The Department of Education froze IDR processing for months, building a backlog that once stood at more than two million borrowers. Even after “restarting” the system, more than a million remain stuck. PSLF’s “Buyback” program alone is stalled with 74,000 unresolved cases.
These are not small bureaucratic hiccups—they are structural features of a system designed to delay cancellation for as long as possible. Borrowers who have made 20, 25, or even 30 years of payments are told to keep paying while they wait for forgiveness that may never come. Refunds are promised but often months away. Meanwhile, loan servicers continue to collect billions in revenue from a population already ground down by decades of repayment.
This isn’t simply mismanagement. It’s debt peonage, engineered by policymakers who present repayment as a civic duty while ensuring that the cycle of indebtedness continues.
The Human Cost
The lawsuit documents borrowers choosing between student loan payments and medical care, postponing life decisions like marriage or homeownership, and even contemplating bankruptcy. Beyond the financial harm, there is profound psychological damage—stress, sleeplessness, and a deepening sense of betrayal by a government that promised relief in exchange for decades of faithful repayment.
The looming “tax bomb” magnifies the crisis. Unless forgiveness is processed before January 1, 2026, discharged balances under IDR will once again be taxable income. That means borrowers who finally achieve cancellation could be hit with crushing IRS bills. Congress has already acted to expand eligibility under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” but the Department continues to deny applications based on rules that no longer exist.
Historical Parallels: A Long Tradition of Debt Betrayal
The student debt crisis is only the latest in a series of American debt struggles where relief was promised but strategically withheld:
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Farm Debt in the 1980s: Family farmers were told federal programs would help restructure loans. Instead, banks and agencies delayed, forcing foreclosures that devastated rural America.
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The GI Bill’s Unequal Promise: While the GI Bill created new opportunities, Black veterans were systematically denied benefits through local gatekeeping. Access existed in theory but was obstructed in practice.
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The Mortgage Crisis of 2008: Homeowners seeking modifications found banks losing paperwork, delaying applications, and profiting from continued payments—an eerie echo of today’s student loan servicing delays.
Each moment reflects the same pattern: debt relief as rhetoric, obstruction as reality.
A System Rigged to Fail Workers
The AFT’s legal filing is narrowly focused on the Administrative Procedure Act, accusing the Department of unlawfully withholding benefits and acting arbitrarily. But the larger structural truth is clear: the U.S. economy relies on debt as a mode of governance.
Student debt now exceeds $1.6 trillion. Universities raise tuition, Wall Street profits from securitized loans, and loan servicers pocket fees from keeping borrowers in repayment limbo. Meanwhile, adjunct professors earn poverty wages, and graduates face underemployment that makes repayment impossible. Higher education is no longer a ladder to the middle class—it is a system of extraction.
Looking Ahead: 2027 and Beyond
Even if courts intervene before the 2026 tax deadline, borrowers face another looming threat: the 2027 austerity cuts, including deep reductions in Medicaid.
For working families, this collision will be devastating. Many borrowers already choose between student loan payments and medical care. When Medicaid cuts hit, tens of millions will lose access to basic health coverage. The financial vise will tighten: loan payments on one side, healthcare costs on the other. The most vulnerable—low-income borrowers, caregivers, the disabled—will be left with no safety net.
In this light, the Department’s refusal to process loan forgiveness is not just bureaucratic delay. It is part of a broader austerity regime that disciplines workers through debt, strips away public benefits, and reinforces a permanent underclass of the indebted.
What’s at Stake
The AFT is asking the courts to compel the Department to process long-overdue discharges. Hearings are expected this fall, with a ruling possible before year’s end. But even if the courts side with borrowers, the deeper crisis remains: a political economy that treats debt not as a temporary burden but as a permanent condition of American life.
For borrowers, this case is about more than loan forgiveness. It is about whether the U.S. will continue its long tradition of promising relief while delivering betrayal—or whether working families will finally break the cycle of debt dependency before the coming wave of austerity in 2027 makes it even harder to escape.
Sources
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American Federation of Teachers, Amended Complaint Against Department of Education (2025)
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U.S. Department of Education, IDR and PSLF Program Guidance
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The College Investor, “Education Dept. Accused of Blocking Student Loan Forgiveness” (2025)
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Michael Hudson, Killing the Host (2015)
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Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man (2012)
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Elizabeth Warren, The Two-Income Trap (2003)
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Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies (2001)
Thursday, September 11, 2025
Choosing the Right College as a Veteran: An Update for 2025
In 2018, Military Times published a guide titled “8 Tips to Help Vets Pick the Right College.” While the intent was good, the higher education landscape has shifted dramatically since then — and not for the better. For-profit colleges have collapsed and rebranded, public universities are raising tuition while cutting services, and predatory practices continue to target veterans with GI Bill benefits.
Meanwhile, agencies like the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) — tasked with protecting veterans — have too often failed in their oversight. Investigations have revealed FOIA stonewalling, regulatory rollbacks, and a revolving door between government and industry. Veterans are left to navigate a minefield of deceptive recruiting, inflated job-placement claims, and programs that leave them indebted and underemployed.
Here’s what veterans need to know in 2025.
1. Don’t Trust the Branding
Colleges love to advertise themselves as “military friendly.” This phrase is meaningless. It’s often nothing more than a marketing slogan used to lure GI Bill dollars. The fact that a school has a veterans’ center or flags on campus tells you little about program quality, affordability, or long-term value.
2. Look at the Numbers, Not the Sales Pitch
Use College Scorecard and IPEDS data to examine:
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Graduation and completion rates
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Typical debt after leaving school
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Loan default and repayment statistics
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Earnings of graduates in your intended field
If a school avoids publishing these numbers or makes them hard to find, that’s a red flag.
3. Understand the Limits of Oversight
The VA’s GI Bill Comparison Tool and DOD “oversight” portals may look official, but they are incomplete and sometimes misleading. The VA has even restored access to schools after proven misconduct under political pressure. DOD contracts with shady for-profit providers continue despite documented abuse.
Oversight agencies are not independent referees — too often, they are captured regulators.
4. Seek Independent Evidence
Avoid relying on large, national veteran nonprofits. Many of these organizations accept funding from schools, corporate partners, or government agencies with vested interests.
Instead, veterans should:
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Check state attorney general enforcement actions and FTC press releases.
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Read independent investigative journalism (such as the Higher Education Inquirer or Project on Predatory Student Lending).
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Ask tough questions of alumni — especially those who dropped out or ended up in debt.
5. Watch Out for Job Placement Claims
Schools often boast of “high job placement rates” without clarifying what that means. Some count temporary or part-time work unrelated to your field. If a program promises guaranteed employment, demand written proof.
6. Don’t Chase Prestige
Big-name universities are not automatically better. Some elite schools partner with for-profit online program managers (OPMs) that deliver low-quality, high-cost programs to veterans and working adults. Prestige branding doesn’t guarantee fair treatment.
7. Weigh Community Colleges and Public Options
Community colleges can be a safer starting point, offering affordable tuition, transferable credits, and practical programs. Some state universities provide strong veteran support at the local level, even when national oversight is weak.
8. Build and Rely on Grassroots Networks
Large veteran organizations at the national level often fail to protect veterans from predatory colleges. Veterans are better served by:
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Local veteran groups that are independent and community-based
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Direct peer networks of fellow veterans who have attended the schools you’re considering
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Public libraries, grassroots councils, and smaller veteran meetups not tied to corporate or political funding
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Sharing experiences through independent media when official channels fail
Protect Yourself, Protect Others
Veterans have long been targeted by predatory colleges because their GI Bill benefits represent guaranteed federal money. DOD, VA, and large national veteran groups have too often enabled this exploitation.
The best defense is independent evidence, grassroots testimony, and investigative journalism. By asking hard questions, demanding transparency, and supporting one another at the local level, veterans can avoid the traps that continue to ensnare far too many.
For those who have been targeted and preyed upon, please consider joining the Facebook group, Restore GI Bill for Veterans.
Sources:
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Military Times: 8 Tips to Help Vets Pick the Right College (2018)
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U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard & IPEDS
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State Attorney General enforcement actions & FTC press releases
Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Apollo Wants Investors to Buy Back the University of Phoenix. They Shouldn’t. (David Halperin)
Having failed to complete deals to sell the troubled giant for-profit University of Phoenix to major state universities in Arkansas and Idaho — after people in those states got cold feet — the school’s owner, private equity behemoth Apollo Global Management, just before the holiday weekend announced an initial public offering for the school.
Phoenix’s parent company had been publicly traded until AGM and two other firms took the company private in 2017. Now they have gone back to Wall Street to re-sell the school to investors.
But should investors want to buy this operation? The presence of the heavily-advertised University of Phoenix in the college market has been bad for U.S. students, taxpayers, and the economy, because it has led many students to enroll in a school that often deceives people, and often leaves students with heavy debts and without the careers they sought — when they could be using taxpayer support and their own money to enroll in better value programs.
Moral and macro-economic concerns aside, it’s not even clear that buying Phoenix will be good for investor bottom lines.
The University of Phoenix, which has received tens of billions from federal taxpayers for student grants and loans — at times more than $2 billion in a single year — has faced numerous law enforcement investigations and actions for its deceptive recruiting of veterans, military service members, and other students across the country.
Most notably, in 2019, Phoenix reached a record $191 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which claimed the school had lured students with false claims about partnerships with major employers. Phoenix ran ads falsely indicating that the school had deals with companies including AT&T, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Twitter, and the American Red Cross to create job opportunities for its students and tailor school programs for such jobs, when that was not the case. The deceptive claim went to the heart of prospective students’ motivations for enrolling. Andrew Smith, then the Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said at the time of the agreement, “Students making important decisions about their education need the facts, not fantasy job opportunities that do not exist.”
And last year California’s attorney general reached a settlement with Phoenix to resolve allegations that the school’s aggressive recruitment tactics directed at military students violated consumer protection laws.
The now almost entirely online school did a two-year dance with the University of Idaho that drew immense criticism from lawmakers, executive branch officials, newspaper editorial boards, and others in that state before the deal was finally called off in June.
Bloomberg reported earlier this year that an IPO might value the University of Phoenix operation, which had $810 million in revenue for 2023-24 (81 percent of that from federal taxpayer dollars), at $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion. And the new Trump administration has signaled in multiple ways that it is reducing protections for students against predatory college abuses, a development that may make investors more willing to buy a piece of a school like Phoenix.
But new federal legislation requires schools to provide some financial value for students. Also, state attorneys general, who have curbed and even slayed a number of for-profit giants over a decade, are watching; the media understands this issue, as it did not in the last wild west era fifteen years ago; and more potential students are wary after a generation of abuses.
So it may end up being much tougher to thrive in the predatory college business than some might think.