Moral Capital and Locus of Control

Moral capital has become a contested currency in American public life. It is deployed by political elites to justify austerity, by campus executives to rationalize managerial authority, and by think tanks to discipline the working class. Yet moral capital also rises from below—from students building mutual-aid networks, from adjuncts organizing for fair wages, from communities confronting the harms universities have helped produce. In an era defined by climate peril, surveillance capitalism, and proliferating wars, the stakes of who controls moral capital—and who gets to exercise real agency—have never been higher.

At the center of this struggle lies a fraught psychological and sociological concept: locus of control. Higher education constantly toggles between narratives of internal control (grit, resilience, personal responsibility) and external control (the market, political pressures, funding cycles). Powerful actors encourage an internal locus of control when it shifts blame downward, and an external locus of control when it shields institutional failure. Students, staff, and faculty live suspended in this contradiction, expected to absorb the consequences of decisions made far above them.

Quality of Life as Moral Imperative

Quality of Life—once peripheral to higher education policy—is now a defining moral issue. Students and workers contend with unstable housing, food insecurity, unsafe campuses, inaccessible mental health care, and relentless economic pressures. For many, these burdens are compounded by existential crises: climate anxiety, global conflicts, democratic backsliding, and precarity amplified by technological surveillance.

Institutions often portray these crises as personal challenges requiring self-management. But Quality of Life is not an individual moral failure; it is a metric of collective conditions. When a university community’s quality of life declines, it signals a profound imbalance between agency and structure—a distorted locus of control.

The Industry’s Manufactured Moral Capital

Universities have long crafted narratives that elevate their own moral standing while displacing responsibility onto individuals. The “grateful striver” student, the “self-sacrificing” adjunct, the “visionary” president—these tropes protect managerial systems from scrutiny and allow elites to accumulate moral capital even as Quality of Life deteriorates for everyone else.

This manufactured moral authority collapses under existential pressures. As campuses confront heatwaves, flooding, militarized policing, housing crises, widening wars, and state-sanctioned surveillance, it becomes impossible to sustain the fiction that individuals can simply “grit” their way to stability.

Reclaiming Moral Capital 

Moral capital is not owned by institutions. It can be reimagined, reclaimed, and reoriented. Four longstanding modes of internal discipline—temperance, celibacy, critical thinking, and solidarity—take on new urgency when placed in the context of planetary and political crisis.

Temperance

Temperance, stripped of its historical misuse, becomes a strategy of mindful refusal in the face of consumption-based exploitation. It includes rejecting burnout culture, resisting technological tools that monitor student behavior, and refusing to internalize blame for systemic failures. In an era of climate breakdown, temperance also signifies ecological responsibility—a modest but meaningful form of internal control aligned with global survival rather than institutional convenience.

Celibacy

Broadly interpreted, celibacy represents intentional self-limitation that protects one’s emotional and cognitive bandwidth. Amid surveillance-driven social media, algorithmic manipulation, and institutions that increasingly commodify student identity, celibacy can be a form of psychological sovereignty. It creates space for reflection in a world designed to keep people reactive, distracted, and easily governed.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking remains the academy’s most subversive tradition—especially when deployed against the university itself. It helps students analyze the interplay between personal agency and systemic constraint. It equips them to understand climate injustice, militarism, and the geopolitics of knowledge production. And it exposes the ways mass surveillance—from learning analytics to campus police technologies—erodes autonomy and shifts the locus of control away from individuals and communities toward powerful institutions.

Solidarity

Solidarity transforms private moral commitments into collective action. It breaks the isolation manufactured by surveillance systems, precarity, and competitive academic cultures. Solidarity has historically been the source of the most effective nonviolent strategies—from civil rights sit-ins to anti-war mobilizations to student debt strikes. Today, as geopolitical conflicts escalate and authoritarian tendencies rise, the power of organized nonviolence becomes an existential necessity. It is one of the few tools capable of confronting militarized policing, resisting state repression, and challenging the corporate infrastructures that profit from crisis.

Nonviolent Strategies in an Era of Global Threat

Nonviolent action remains a potent form of moral capital—and one of the most effective forms of collective agency. Research across conflicts shows that sustained, mass-based nonviolent movements often outperform violent struggles, especially against highly resourced opponents. For universities, which increasingly collaborate with defense contractors, data brokers, and state surveillance agencies, nonviolent resistance has become both a safeguard and a moral compass.

Sit-ins, teach-ins, encampments, divestment campaigns, and labor actions reassert external locus of control as something communities can influence—not by force, but by moral clarity, strategic discipline, and the refusal to comply with harmful systems.

Mass Surveillance as a Threat to Moral Agency

Mass surveillance is now woven into the fabric of academic life. Learning management systems track student behavior down to the minute. Proctoring software uses biometrics to police exams. Campus police drones and public-private security networks feed data into law enforcement databases. Administrative dashboards quantify student “risk” and worker “efficiency” in ways that reshape institutional priorities.

This surveillance apparatus corrodes moral capital by reducing human judgment to automated metrics. It also distorts locus of control: individuals are told to take responsibility while being monitored and managed by opaque systems far beyond their influence.

Reclaiming agency requires dismantling or limiting these systems, demanding transparency, and reasserting human dignity in spaces now governed by algorithms.

Toward a More Honest Locus of Control

Moral capital and locus of control are not academic abstractions. They are lived realities shaped by climate disruption, war, inequality, and surveillance. Higher education must stop using moral narratives to deflect responsibility and instead cultivate practices that reinforce real agency: temperance, celibacy, critical thinking, solidarity, and the disciplined power of nonviolent resistance.

In a world marked by existential threats, reclaiming moral capital from below is not simply an intellectual exercise—it is a condition for survival, and a pathway to collective liberation.

Sources
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Erica Chenoweth & Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Astra Taylor, Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone

National Day of Mourning: Higher Education’s Long Reckoning With Indigenous Oppression

[Editor's note: United American Indians of New England host the National Day of Mourning. Their website is at United American Indians of New England - UAINE.]

Each November, while much of the United States celebrates Thanksgiving, Indigenous communities and their allies gather in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and across the country for the National Day of Mourning. It is a day that confronts the mythology of national innocence and replaces it with historical clarity. For Higher Education Inquirer, the significance of this day extends directly into the heart of American higher education—a system built, in no small part, on the expropriation of Indigenous land, the exploitation of Native Peoples, and the continued structural racism that shapes their educational opportunities today.

From the earliest colonial colleges to the flagship research institutions of the twenty-first century, U.S. higher education has never been separate from the project of settler colonialism. It has been one of its instruments.

Land, Wealth, and the Origins of the University

America’s oldest colleges—Harvard, Yale, William & Mary, Dartmouth—were founded within the colonial order that dispossessed Indigenous communities. While missionary language framed some of these institutions’ early purposes, they operated through an extractive logic: the seizure of land, the conversion of cultural worlds, and, eventually, the accumulation of immense academic wealth.

The Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 expanded this pattern on a national scale. Recent research documented by the “Land-Grab Universities” project shows that nearly eleven million acres of Indigenous land—taken through coercive treaties, forced removal, or outright theft—were funneled into endowments for public universities. Students today walk across campuses financed by displacements their own institutions have yet to fully acknowledge, let alone remedy.

Higher Education as an Arm of Assimilation

The United States also used education as a tool for forced assimilation. The Indian boarding school system, with the Carlisle Industrial School as its model, operated in partnership with federal officials, church agencies, and academic institutions. Native children were taken from their families, stripped of their languages, and subjected to relentless cultural destruction.

Universities contributed research, training, and personnel to this system, embedding the logic of “civilizing” Indigenous Peoples into the academy’s structure. That legacy endures in curricula that minimize Indigenous knowledge systems and in institutional cultures that prize Eurocentric epistemologies as default.

Scientific Racism, Anthropology, and the Theft of Ancestors

American universities played a central role in producing scientific racism. Anthropologists and medical researchers collected Indigenous remains, objects, and sacred items without consent. Museums and university labs became repositories for thousands of ancestors—often obtained through grave robberies, military campaigns, or opportunistic scholarship.

The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was designed to force institutions to return ancestors and cultural patrimony. Yet decades later, many universities are still out of compliance, delaying repatriation while continuing to benefit from the research collections they amassed through violence.

Contemporary Structural Racism in Higher Education

The oppression is not confined to history. Structural racism continues to constrain Native Peoples in higher education today.

Native students remain among the most underrepresented and under-supported groups on American campuses. Chronic underfunding of Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) reflects a broader political disregard for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. Meanwhile, elite institutions recruit Native students for marketing purposes while failing to invest in retention, community support, or Indigenous faculty hiring.

Some universities have begun implementing land acknowledgments, but these symbolic gestures have little impact when institutions refuse to confront their material obligations: returning land, committing long-term funding to Indigenous programs, or restructuring governance to include tribal representatives.

What a Real Reckoning Would Require

A genuine response to the National Day of Mourning would require far more than statements of solidarity. It would involve confronting the ways American higher education continues to profit from dispossession and the ways Native students continue to bear disproportionate burdens—from tuition to cultural isolation to the racist violence that still occurs on and around campuses.

Real accountability would include:

• Full compliance with NAGPRA and expedited repatriation.
• Transparent reporting of land-grant wealth and the return or shared governance of those lands.
• Stable, meaningful funding for TCUs.
• Hiring, tenure, and research policies that center Indigenous scholarship and sovereignty.
• Long-term institutional commitments—financial, curricular, and political—to Indigenous communities.

These steps require institutions to shift from performative recognition to structural transformation.

A Day of Mourning—And a Call to Action

The National Day of Mourning is not merely a counter-holiday. It is a reminder that the United States was founded on violence against Native Peoples—and that its colleges and universities were not passive beneficiaries but active participants in that violence.

For higher education leaders, faculty, and students, the question is no longer whether these histories are real or whether they matter. They are documented. They are ongoing. They matter profoundly.

The real question is what institutions are willing to give up—land, power, wealth, or narrative control—to support Indigenous liberation.

On this National Day of Mourning, HEI honors the truth that Indigenous survival is an act of resistance, and Indigenous sovereignty is not a symbolic aspiration but an overdue demand. The future of higher education must move through that truth, not around it.

Sources
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
The Land-Grab Universities Project (High Country News & Land-Grab Universities database).
David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.
Margaret D. Jacobs, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World.
NAGPRA regulations and compliance reports.

The Mis-education of Global Elites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Academic Sources

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

Nonviolent Resistance in the Trump Era: Why Satire, Journalism, and Marches Are Not Enough

In moments of democratic crisis, societies often turn to familiar tools: satire, journalism, and public demonstrations. Today—amid intensifying authoritarian rhetoric, rising political violence, and fraying institutions—forms of dissent like South Park, The New York Times, and the No Kings marches reflect a country struggling to assert democratic values.

These efforts matter. But they are not enough.

If democracy is to endure, millions—not just artists, reporters, or marchers—must engage in coordinated, creative, nonviolent resistance. And they must do so in solidarity.

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Satire as Resistance: When South Park Breaks the Spell

For decades, South Park has peeled back the layers of American political absurdity. In the Trump era, its depictions of autocratic posturing and the cult of personality have helped audiences see through the spectacle.

But satire remains commentary, not coordination. It can spark awareness, but it cannot restrain authoritarian power on its own.

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Journalistic Resistance: The New York Times and the Weight of Truth

The New York Times has played a crucial role in exposing corruption, extremism, disinformation networks, and democratic backsliding. Its reporters have often faced harassment and threats simply for revealing the truth.

Yet journalism cannot mobilize the public by itself. Facts require action—and action requires organization.

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Street Resistance: The No Kings Marches and Public Defiance

The No Kings marches—an umbrella for decentralized, anti-authoritarian street demonstrations—represent a powerful expression of nonviolent public resistance. Emerging across cities and campuses, these marches assert a simple moral principle: no leader, party, or faction is entitled to unchecked power.

Their message is clear:

• Democracy requires constraints.

• Political leaders are not royalty.

• The people, not a single figure, hold ultimate sovereignty.

The No Kings marches reclaim public space from fear and resignation. They remind communities that resistance does not require weapons—only bodies, voices, and courage.

But marches alone cannot build the long-term structures needed to protect democracy. They ignite momentum; they do not sustain it without broader collective support.

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Universities Have Failed to Defend Democratic Dissent

Historically, universities were vital sites of moral courage and mass mobilization. Today, however, university presidents have aggressively squelched campus protests—through police intervention, restrictive rules, suspensions, and pressure from wealthy donors.

This chilling effect has not recovered. Student activism remains suppressed at the very moment when democratic engagement is most essential.

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The Growing Possibility of a General Strike

As institutional stability deteriorates, Americans increasingly discuss the possibility of a General Strike—a nationwide, multi-sector refusal to work until political abuses are addressed. General strikes have played decisive roles in democratic movements around the world.

A U.S. General Strike could:

• Halt the economic machinery that enables authoritarian governance

• Force political leaders to negotiate rather than intimidate

• Demonstrate the nonviolent power of ordinary workers

The concept is no longer fringe. It is a rational response to a political system in crisis.

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Another Government Shutdown: A Flashpoint for Resistance

The threat of another federal government shutdown exposes a political class willing to damage the public in pursuit of ideological power. Shutdowns harm millions of workers, families, and communities.

But they also clarify a crucial truth:
the government depends entirely on ordinary people showing up.

If a shutdown occurs, it could accelerate conversations about coordinated nonviolent resistance—boycotts, demonstrations, strikes—and push more Americans to see the system’s fragility and their own collective power.

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Nonviolent Resistance Must Be Mass-Based and Rooted in Solidarity

Satire, journalism, and street marches each contribute to political consciousness. But democratic survival requires:

• Coordinated labor action, including sector-wide strikes

• Mass protests, sit-ins, and civil disobedience

• Boycotts and divestment aimed at authoritarian enablers

• Digital resistance against disinformation

• Local mutual aid networks and coalition-building

• Cross-racial, cross-class, and interfaith solidarity

Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires collective, creative noncooperation with authoritarian drift.

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Solidarity Is the Strategy

Authoritarianism thrives on isolation and fear.
Nonviolent movements thrive on courage and connection.

Satire can puncture illusions.
Journalism can expose wrongdoing.
The No Kings marches can reclaim public space.
Students can still spark moral clarity—if administrators allow it.
Workers can stop the machine entirely.

But only mass, sustained, nonviolent solidarity can protect democracy now.

And the moment to act is now.

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Sources on Nonviolent Movements and Civil Resistance

Books & Academic Works

• Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action

• Erica Chenoweth & Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works

• Jonathan Pinckney, From Dissent to Democracy

• Jamila Raqib & Gene Sharp, Self-Liberation

• Srdja Popović, Blueprint for Revolution

• Peter Ackerman & Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful

Research Centers & Reports

• International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC)

• Albert Einstein Institution

• U.S. Institute of Peace publications on civil resistance

• Freedom House reports on democratic erosion

Historical Case Studies

• U.S. Civil Rights Movement

• Solidarity Movement (Poland)

• People Power Revolution (Philippines)

• Anti-Apartheid Struggle (South Africa)

• Selected Arab Spring movements

Why People Under 35 Are Not Afraid of Democratic Socialism

For Americans under 35, the term “democratic socialism” triggers neither fear nor Cold War reflexes. It represents something far simpler: a demand for a functioning society. Younger generations have grown up in a world where basic pillars of American life—higher education, medicine, economic mobility, and even life expectancy—have deteriorated while inequality has soared. Democratic socialism, in their view, is not a fringe ideology but a practical response to systems that have ceased to serve the common good.

Nowhere is this clearer than in higher education. Millennials and Gen Z entered adulthood as universities became corporate enterprises, expanding administrative layers, pushing adjunct labor to the brink, and relying on debt-financed tuition increases to keep the machine running. Public investment collapsed, predatory for-profit chains proliferated, and nonprofit universities acted like hedge funds with classrooms attached. Students saw institutions with billion-dollar endowments operate as landlords and asset managers, all while passing costs onto working families. When Bernie Sanders called for tuition-free public college, young people did not hear utopianism—they heard a plan grounded in global reality, a model that exists in Germany, Sweden, Finland, and other social democracies that treat education as a public good rather than a revenue stream.

Healthcare tells an even harsher story. Americans under 35 watched their parents and grandparents navigate a system more focused on billing codes than care, one where an ambulance ride costs a week’s wages and a bout of illness can mean bankruptcy. They experienced the rise of corporatized university medical centers, private equity–owned emergency rooms, and insurance bureaucracies that ration access more cruelly than any state. They saw life-saving drugs priced like luxury goods and mental health services pushed out of reach. Compare this to nations with universal healthcare: longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, and far less medical debt. Again, Sanders’ Medicare for All resonated not because of ideology but because young people recognized it as a plausible path toward the kind of humane medical system described by scholars like Harriet Washington, Elisabeth Rosenthal, and Mahmud Mamdani, who all critique the structural violence embedded in systems of unequal care.

Life expectancy itself has become a generational indictment. For the first time in modern U.S. history, it has fallen, driven by overdose deaths, suicide, preventable illness, and worsening inequities. Younger Americans know that friends and peers have died far earlier than their counterparts abroad. They see that countries with strong public services—childcare, unemployment insurance, housing supports, universal healthcare—live longer, healthier lives. They also see how austerity and privatization have hollowed out public health infrastructure in the United States, leaving communities vulnerable to crises large and small. The message is clear: societies that invest in people live longer; societies that treat health as a commodity do not.

Quality of Life (QOL) ties all of this together. People under 35 face rent burdens unimaginable to previous generations, debts that prevent them from forming families, stagnant wages, and a labor market defined by precarity. They face the erosion of public space, public transit, libraries, and social supports—what Mamdani would describe as the slow unraveling of the civic realm under neoliberalism. When they look abroad, they see countries with social democratic frameworks offering guaranteed parental leave, subsidized childcare, free or nearly free college, universal healthcare, and robust worker protections. These are not distant fantasies; they are functioning models that produce higher happiness levels, stronger social trust, and more stable democracies.

Older generations often accuse young people of radicalism, but the reality is the reverse. Millennials and Gen Z are pragmatic. They have lived through the failures of unfettered capitalism: historic inequality, monopolistic industries, soaring costs of living, and a political class unresponsive to their material conditions. They have read Sanders’ critiques of oligarchy and Mamdani’s analyses of state power and structural violence, and they see themselves reflected in those diagnoses. Democratic socialism appeals because it is rooted in material improvements to daily life rather than in abstract political theory. It promises a society where income does not determine survival, where education does not require lifelong debt, where parents can afford to raise children, and where basic health is not a luxury good.

People under 35 are not afraid of democratic socialism because they have already seen what the absence of a social democratic framework produces. They are not seeking revolution for its own sake. They are seeking a livable future. And increasingly, they view democratic socialism not as a radical break but as the only realistic path toward rebuilding public institutions, revitalizing democracy, and ensuring that future generations inherit a country worth living in.

Sources
Sanders, Bernie. Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In.
Sanders, Bernie. Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance.
Mamdani, Mahmood. Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity.
Mamdani, Mahmood. Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities.
Washington, Harriet. Medical Apartheid.
Rosenthal, Elisabeth. An American Sickness.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Baldwin, Davarian. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower.
Bousquet, Marc. How the University Works.

Generation Z and the Fractured American Dream: Class Divide, Debt, and the Search for a Future

For Generation Z, the old story of social mobility—study hard, go to college, work your way up—has lost its certainty. The class divide that once seemed bridgeable through education now feels entrenched, as debt, precarious work, and economic volatility blur the promise of progress.

The new economy—dominated by artificial intelligence, speculative assets like cryptocurrency, and inflated housing markets—has not delivered stability for most. Instead, it’s widened gaps between those who own and those who owe. Many young Americans feel locked out of wealth-building entirely. Some have turned to riskier bets—digital assets, gig work, or start-ups powered by AI tools—to chase opportunities that traditional institutions no longer provide. Others have succumbed to despair. Suicide rates among young adults have climbed sharply in recent years, correlating with financial stress, debt, and social isolation.

And echoing through this uncertain landscape is a song that first rose from the coalfields of Kentucky during the Great Depression—Florence Reece’s 1931 protest hymn, “Which Side Are You On?”

Come all you good workers,
Good news to you I’ll tell,
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.

Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

Nearly a century later, those verses feel newly urgent—because Gen Z is again being forced to pick a side: between solidarity and survival, between reforming a broken system or resigning themselves to it.

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The Class Divide and the Broken Ladder
Despite record levels of education, Gen Z faces limited social mobility. College remains a class marker, not an equalizer. Students from affluent families attend better-funded universities, graduate on time, and often receive help with housing or job placement. Working-class and first-generation students, meanwhile, navigate under-resourced campuses, heavier debt, and weaker professional networks.

The Pew Research Center found that first-generation college graduates have nearly $100,000 less in median wealth than peers whose parents also hold degrees. For many, the degree no longer guarantees a secure foothold in the middle class—it simply delays financial independence.

They say in Harlan County,
There are no neutrals there,
You’ll either be a union man,
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

The metaphor still fits: there are no neutrals in the modern class struggle over debt, housing, and automation.

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Debt, Doubt, and the New Normal
Gen Z borrowers owe an average of around $23,000 in student loans, a figure growing faster than any other generation’s debt load. Over half regret taking on those loans. Many delay buying homes, having children, or even seeking medical care. Those who drop out without degrees are burdened with debt and little to show for it.

The debt-based model has become a defining feature of American life—especially for the working class. The price of entry to a better future is borrowing against one’s own.

Don’t scab for the bosses,
Don’t listen to their lies,
Us poor folks haven’t got a chance
Unless we organize.

If Reece’s song once called miners to unionize against coal barons, its spirit now calls borrowers, renters, adjuncts, and gig workers to collective resistance against financial systems that profit from their precarity.

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AI and the Erosion of Work
Artificial intelligence promises efficiency, but it also threatens to hollow out the entry-level job market Gen Z depends on. Automation in journalism, design, law, and customer service cuts off rungs of the career ladder just as young workers reach for them.

While elite graduates may move into roles that supervise or profit from AI, working-class Gen Zers are more likely to face displacement. AI amplifies the class divide: it rewards those who already have capital, coding skills, or connections—and sidelines those who don’t.

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Crypto Dreams and Financial Desperation
Locked out of traditional wealth paths, many young people turned to cryptocurrency during the pandemic. Platforms like Robinhood and Coinbase promised quick gains and independence from the “rigged” economy. But when crypto markets crashed in 2022, billions in speculative wealth evaporated. Some who had borrowed or used student loan refunds to invest lost everything.

Online forums chronicled not only the financial losses but also the psychological fallout—stories of panic, shame, and in some tragic cases, suicide. The new “digital gold rush” became another mechanism for transferring wealth upward.

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The Real Estate Wall
While digital markets rise and fall, real estate remains the ultimate symbol of exclusion. Home prices have climbed over 40 percent since 2020, while mortgage rates hover near 8 percent. For most of Gen Z, ownership is out of reach.

Older generations built equity through housing; Gen Z rents indefinitely, enriching landlords and institutional investors. Without intergenerational help, the “starter home” has become a myth. In America’s new class order, those who inherit property inherit mobility.

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Despair and the Silent Crisis
Behind the data lies a mental health emergency. The CDC reports that suicide among Americans aged 10–24 has risen nearly 60 percent in the past decade. Economic precarity, debt, housing insecurity, and climate anxiety all contribute.

Therapists describe “financial trauma” as a defining condition for Gen Z—chronic anxiety rooted in systemic instability. Universities respond with mindfulness workshops, but few confront the deeper issue: a society that privatized risk and monetized hope.

They say in Harlan County,
There are no neutrals there—
Which side are you on, my people,
Which side are you on?

The question lingers like a challenge to policymakers, educators, and investors alike.

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A Two-Tier Future
Today’s economy is splitting into two distinct realities:

• The secure class, buffered by family wealth, education, AI-driven income, and real estate assets.

• The precarious class, burdened by loans, high rents, unstable work, and psychological strain.

The supposed democratization of opportunity through technology and education has in practice entrenched a new feudalism—one coded in algorithms and contracts instead of coal and steel.

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Repairing the System, Not the Student
For Generation Z, the American Dream has become a high-interest loan. Education, technology, and financial innovation—once tools of liberation—now function as instruments of control.

Reforming higher education is necessary, but not sufficient. The deeper work lies in redistributing power: capping predatory interest rates, investing in affordable housing, curbing speculative bubbles, ensuring that AI’s gains benefit labor as well as capital, and confronting the mental health crisis that shadows all of it.

Florence Reece’s song endures because its question has never been answered—only updated. As Gen Z stands at the intersection of debt and digital capitalism, that question rings louder than ever:

Which side are you on?

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Sources

• Florence Reece, “Which Side Are You On?” (1931).

• Pew Research Center, “First-Generation College Graduates Lag Behind Their Peers on Key Economic Outcomes,” 2021.

• Dēmos, The Debt Divide: How Student Debt Impacts Opportunities for Black and White Borrowers, 2016.

• EducationData.org, “Student Loan Debt by Generation,” 2024.

• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Gen Z Student Debt and Wealth Data Brief, 2022.

• CNBC, “Gen Z vs. Their Parents: How the Generations Stack Up Financially,” 2024.

• WUSF, “Generation Z’s Net Worth Is Being Undercut by College Debt,” 2024.

• Newsweek, “Student Loan Update: Gen Z Hit with Highest Payments,” 2024.

• The Kaplan Group, “How Student Debt Is Locking Millennials and Gen Z Out of Homeownership,” 2024.

• CDC, Suicide Mortality in the United States, 2001–2022, National Center for Health Statistics, 2023.

• Brookings Institution, “The Impact of AI on Labor Markets: Inequality and Automation,” 2024.

• CNBC, “Crypto Crash Wipes Out Billions in Investor Wealth, Gen Z Most Exposed,” 2023.

• Zillow, “U.S. Housing Affordability Reaches Lowest Point Since 1989,” 2024.

Muckraking and the Modern University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Upton Sinclair and The Goosestep (1923)

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

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Jessica Mitford and Corporate Exploitation (1960s)

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

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

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

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

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The Chilling Effect of Legal Retaliation

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

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

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The Enduring Importance of Muckraking

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

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

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Reclaiming the Public Good (If That's Possible) 

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

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Sources

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

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

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

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

• Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid (2006)

• Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness (2017)

• Higher Education Inquirer archives, 2014–2025

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

When Parenthood Feels Like a Trap: Regret, Trumpism, and the Educated Underclass

The recent MSN article “I Regret Having Children — It Has Stripped My Life of Meaning” is not just a private confession. It is a mirror reflecting a collapsing social order — one where parenting, education, and labor are all defined by debt, exhaustion, and disillusionment.

In today’s America, the family, the school, and the workplace no longer promise progress; they reproduce precarity. The personal regret of parents becomes a collective symptom of a society that demands self-sacrifice but offers little reciprocity.

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The Privatization of Care and the Myth of the “Good Parent”

Since the Reagan era, neoliberal ideology has reduced social problems to personal failures. Families are told to work harder, plan better, and be grateful — while the state retreats from childcare, healthcare, and education.

Parenting, once understood as a shared civic project, is now a private ordeal. The “good parent” myth demands endless self-denial while ignoring the structural forces that make family life unsustainable: stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, unaffordable education, and the erosion of community networks.

The parent who whispers, “I regret having children,” isn’t rejecting love — they are acknowledging betrayal. They were promised fulfillment through family, but abandoned by a system that commodifies care and isolates suffering.

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The Dobbs Decision and the Politics of Coerced Parenthood

The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling — which overturned Roe v. Wade — deepened this betrayal. By stripping away the constitutional right to abortion, the Supreme Court forced millions into unwanted pregnancies under conditions of economic and emotional strain.

This was no accident of jurisprudence. It was the political offspring of neoliberal neglect and Trump-era authoritarianism — a regime that exalts “family values” while defunding the social infrastructure that makes family life possible.

Dobbs represents coerced parenthood in a nation without paid leave, affordable childcare, or universal healthcare. It is the culmination of a system that insists on reproduction but refuses responsibility — transforming bodily autonomy into a political battleground while leaving families to fend for themselves.

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Trumpism, Despair, and Manufactured Nostalgia

Trumpism feeds on the despair that neoliberalism creates. It promises to restore “traditional America” — stable jobs, strong families, obedient children — but it offers only resentment as consolation.

When exhausted parents or debt-ridden graduates look for meaning, Trumpian populism channels their frustration toward scapegoats: immigrants, educators, feminists, the poor. It converts structural despair into cultural war.

Trump’s America is a paradox: it glorifies the family while destroying the material base that sustains it. It preaches “Make America Great Again” while keeping its base desperate, indebted, and emotionally dependent on rage.

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The Rise of the Educated Underclass

Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than in the making of the educated underclass — the millions of Americans who did everything “right” but found the social contract shredded beneath them.

They earned degrees, followed career advice, and invested in the myth of meritocracy. Yet decades of wage stagnation, precarious employment, and student debt have left them economically fragile and politically disoriented.

Many are parents who believed education would secure their children’s futures. Instead, they see their own children inheriting instability — locked out of homeownership, burdened with loans, and facing a world where credentials no longer guarantee dignity.

This educated underclass, spanning teachers, social workers, adjunct professors, nurses, and mid-level professionals, represents the human fallout of the neoliberal university and the marketized economy it feeds. Their disillusionment — like parental regret — is both personal and systemic.

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Higher Education as a Debt Factory

Colleges once promised upward mobility; now they manufacture anxiety and debt. The family that sacrifices for tuition does so on faith that a degree still matters. But as corporate consolidation and automation erode stable work, that faith collapses.

Parents, particularly those from the working and lower-middle class, internalize this collapse as failure — not recognizing that the problem lies in a system that sells hope on credit. Their children, emerging into a gig economy with record debt, form the next generation of the educated underclass: credentialed, precarious, and politically volatile.

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Regret as a Rational Response

In this context, parental regret is not deviance — it is rational. It reflects the exhaustion of trying to raise children, pay loans, and sustain meaning in a society where everything, including love, has been commodified.

It reflects the psychic cost of neoliberalism’s lie: that education, work, and family can still deliver self-realization without collective solidarity or public investment.

And it warns of what happens when a nation loses faith not only in its institutions but in the very act of reproduction itself.

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Toward a Politics of Care and Repair

To break this cycle, we must confront the intertwined crises of reproduction, education, and inequality. A humane alternative would demand:

• Universal reproductive freedom — protecting the right not to bear children, and the resources to raise them with dignity.

• Tuition-free higher education and student debt relief — dismantling the educated underclass.

• Guaranteed childcare, healthcare, and paid leave — treating parenting as collective labor, not private suffering.

• Living wages and housing justice — reestablishing the economic base of real family life.

• Democratized higher education — ending the capture of universities by finance and corporate boards.

Only by restoring care as a public good — not a private burden — can we move beyond regret toward renewal.

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From Regret to Resistance

The parent who says, “I regret having children,” and the graduate who says, “My degree ruined my life,” are not failures. They are witnesses. Their grief exposes the moral bankruptcy of a system that exploits care, education, and aspiration for profit.

Trumpism thrives on that despair, offering nostalgia instead of justice. Neoliberalism rationalizes it, calling it “personal responsibility.”

But the truth is collective: meaning cannot survive where solidarity has been destroyed. The antidote to regret is not silence — it is organizing. It is rebuilding a society where care, education, and dignity are shared, not sold.

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Sources

• MSN News, “I Regret Having Children — It Has Stripped My Life of Meaning,” 2025.

• Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. ___ (2022).

• Donath, Orna. Regretting Motherhood: A Sociopolitical Analysis. North Atlantic Books, 2017.

• Fraser, Nancy. Cannibal Capitalism. Verso, 2022.

• Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos. Zone Books, 2015.

• Giroux, Henry. Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Haymarket, 2014.

• Hochschild, Arlie. Strangers in Their Own Land. The New Press, 2016.

• Shaulis, Dahn. The College Meltdown (Higher Education Inquirer archives).

The College Meltdown: A Retrospective

[In 2017, we collaborated with Crush the Street on a video describing the College Meltdown.]  

“Education is not merely a credentialing system; it is a humanizing act that fosters connection, purpose, and community.”

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Origins

The College Meltdown began in the mid-2010s as a blog chronicling the slow collapse of U.S. higher education. Rising tuition, mounting student debt, and corporatization were visible signs, but the deeper crisis was structural: the erosion of public accountability and mission.

By 2015, the warning signs were unmistakable to us. On some campuses, student spaces were closed to host corporate “best practices” conferences. At many schools, adjunct instructors carried the bulk of teaching responsibilities, often without benefits, while administrators celebrated innovation. Higher education was quietly being reshaped to benefit corporations over students and communities — a true meltdown.

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Patterns of the Meltdown

Enrollment in U.S. colleges began declining as early as 2011, reflecting broader demographic shifts: fewer children entering the system and a growing population of older adults. Small colleges, community colleges, and regional public universities were hardest hit, while flagship institutions consolidated wealth and prestige.

Corporate intermediaries known as Online Program Managers (OPMs) managed recruitment, marketing, and course design, taking large portions of tuition while universities retained risk. Fully automated robocolleges emerged, relying on AI-driven templates, predictive analytics, and outsourced grading. While efficient, these systems dehumanized education: students became data points, faculty became monitors, and mentorship disappeared.

“Robocolleges and AI-driven systems reduce humans to data points — an education stripped of connection is no education at all.”

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Feeding the AI Beast

As part of our effort to reclaim knowledge and influence public discourse, we actively contributed to Wikipedia. Over the years, we made more than 12,000 edits on higher education topics, ensuring accurate documentation of predatory practices, adjunct labor, OPMs, and corporatization. These edits both informed the public and, inadvertently, fed the AI beast — large language models and AI systems that scrape Wikipedia for training data now reflect our work, amplifying it in ways we could never have predicted.

“By documenting higher education rigorously, we shaped both public knowledge and the datasets powering AI systems — turning transparency into a tool of influence.”

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Anxiety, Anomie, and Alienation

The College Meltdown documented the mental health toll of these transformations. Rising anxiety, feelings of anomie, and widespread alienation were linked to AI reliance, dehumanized classrooms, insecure faculty labor, and societal pressures. Students felt like credential seekers; faculty suffered burnout.

“Addressing the psychological and social effects of dehumanized education is essential for ethical recovery.”

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Trump, Anti-Intellectualism, and Fear in the Era of Neoliberalism

The project also addressed the broader political and social climate. The Trump era brought rising anti-intellectualism, skepticism toward expertise, and a celebration of market logic over civic and moral education. For many, it was an era of fear: fear of surveillance, fear of litigation, fear of being marginalized in a rapidly corporatized, AI-driven educational system. Neoliberal policies exacerbated these pressures, emphasizing privatization, metrics, and competition over community and care.

“Living under Trump-era neoliberalism, with AI monitoring, corporate oversight, and mass surveillance, education became a space of anxiety as much as learning.”

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Quality of Life and the Call for Rehumanization

Education should serve human well-being, not just revenue. The blog emphasized Quality of Life and advocated for Rehumanization — restoring mentorship, personal connection, and ethical engagement.

“Rehumanization is not a luxury; it is the foundation of meaningful learning.”

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FOIA Requests and Whistleblowers

From the start, The College Meltdown relied on evidence-based reporting. FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests were used to obtain internal communications, budgets, and regulatory filings, shining light on opaque practices. Whistleblowers, including adjunct faculty and staff at universities and OPMs, provided firsthand testimony of misconduct, financial malfeasance, and educational dehumanization. Their courage was central to the project’s mission of transparency and accountability.

“Insider testimony and public records revealed the hidden forces reshaping higher education, from corporate influence to predatory practices.”

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Historical Sociology: Understanding the Systemic Collapse

The importance of historical sociology cannot be overstated in analyzing the decline of higher education. By examining the evolution of educational systems, we can identify patterns of inequality, the concentration of power, and the commodification of knowledge. Historical sociology provides the tools to understand how past decisions and structures have led to the current crisis.

“Historical sociology reveals, defines, and formulates patterns of social development, helping us understand the systemic forces at play in education.”

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Naming Bad Actors: Accountability and Reform

A critical aspect of The College Meltdown was the emphasis on naming bad actors — identifying and holding accountable those responsible for the exploitation and degradation of higher education. This included:

• University Administrators: Prioritizing profit over pedagogy.

• Corporate Entities: Robocolleges and OPMs profiting at the expense of educational quality.

• Political Figures and Ultraconservatives: Promoting policies that undermined public education and anti-intellectualism.

“Holding bad actors accountable is essential for meaningful reform and the restoration of education's ethical purpose.”

[In 2016, we called out several bad actors in for-profit higher education, including CEOs Jack Massimino, Kevin Modany, and Todd Nelson.] 

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Existential Aspects of Climate Change

The blog also examined the existential dimensions of climate change. Students and faculty face a dual challenge: preparing for uncertain futures while witnessing environmental degradation accelerate. Higher education itself is implicated, both as a contributor through consumption and as a forum for solutions. The looming climate crisis intensifies anxiety, alienation, and the urgency for ethical, human-centered education.

“Climate change makes the stakes of education existential: our survival, our knowledge, and our moral responsibility are intertwined.”

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Mass Speculation and Financialization

Another critical theme explored was mass speculation and financialization. The expansion of student debt markets, tuition-backed bonds, and corporate investments in higher education transformed students into financial instruments. These speculative dynamics mirrored broader economic instability, creating both a moral and systemic crisis for the educational sector.

“When education becomes a commodity for speculation, learning, mentorship, and ethical development are subordinated to profit and risk metrics.”

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Coverage of Protests and Nonviolent Resistance

The College Meltdown documented student and faculty resistance: tuition protests, adjunct labor actions, and campaigns against predatory OPM arrangements. Nonviolent action was central: teach-ins, sit-ins, and organized campaigns demonstrated moral authority and communal solidarity in the face of systemic pressures, litigation, and corporate intimidation.

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Collaboration and Resistance

Glen McGhee provided exceptional guidance, connecting insights on systemic collapse, inequality, and credential inflation. Guest authors contributed across disciplines and movements, making the blog a living archive of accountability and solidarity:

Guest Contributors:
Bryan Alexander, Ann Bowers, James Michael Brodie, Randall Collins, Garrett Fitzgerald, Erica Gallagher, Henry Giroux, David Halperin, Bill Harrington, Phil Hill, Robert Jensen, Hank Kalet, Neil Kraus, the LACCD Whistleblower, Wendy Lynne Lee, Annelise Orleck, Robert Kelchen, Debbi Potts, Jack Metzger, Derek Newton, Gary Roth, Mark Salisbury, Gary Stocker, Harry Targ, Heidi Weber, Richard Wolff, and Helena Worthen.

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Lessons from the Meltdown

The crisis was systemic. Technology amplified inequality. Corporate higher education rebranded rather than reformed. Adjunctification and labor precarity became normalized. Communities of color and working-class students suffered disproportionately.

Dehumanization emerged as a central theme. AI, automation, and robocolleges prioritized efficiency over mentorship, data over dialogue, and systems over human relationships. Rising anxiety, anomie, and alienation reflected the human toll.

“Rehumanization, mentorship, community, transparency, ethical accountability, and ecological awareness are essential to restore meaningful higher education.”

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Looking Forward

As higher education entered the Trump era, its future remained uncertain. Students, faculty, and communities faced fear under neoliberal policies, AI-driven monitoring, mass surveillance, litigation pressures, ultraconservative influence, climate crises, and financial speculation. Will universities reclaim their role as public goods, or continue as commodified services? The College Meltdown stands as a testament to those who resisted dehumanization and anti-intellectualism. It also calls for Quality of Life, ethical practice, mental well-being, environmental responsibility, and Rehumanization, ensuring education serves the whole person, not just the bottom line. 

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Sources and References

• Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid. Doubleday, 2006.

• Rosenthal, Elisabeth. An American Sickness. Penguin, 2017.

• Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Crown, 2010.

• Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul. University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

• Paucek, Chip. “2U and the Growth of OPMs.” EdSurge, 2021. link

• Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Basic Books, 2010.

• Alexander, Bryan. Academia Next. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

• U.S. Department of Education. “Closed School Information.” 2016–2020. link

• Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Student Debt Statistics, 2024. link

• Wayback Machine Archive of College Meltdown Blog: link