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Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Neg Reg Day 2: Still Turning Borrowers into Political Pawns (Student Borrower Protection Center)
Failing Students by Design: Strategic Inefficiency in US Higher Education
Southern New Hampshire University isn’t the only institution quietly unraveling. Across the U.S. higher education landscape, millions of students are being failed not by accident—but by design.
Financial aid systems are convoluted. Mental health services are threadbare. Loan forgiveness programs are bureaucratic nightmares. Advising and support services are being outsourced or cut altogether. And as universities continue to raise tuition, slash labor costs, and celebrate "efficiency," it becomes increasingly clear: these aren’t unfortunate oversights. They are intentional. The failure is the strategy.
This is what scholars and critics call strategic inefficiency—the deliberate maintenance of confusing, slow, or inaccessible systems to limit responsibility and reduce costs. In other words, when students slip through the cracks, it's often because the cracks were engineered that way.
At every level of higher education, we see systems designed to frustrate and exhaust the very people they're supposed to help. Financial aid forms get lost. Transfer credits vanish. Borrower Defense claims sit idle for years. Campus disability services are underfunded and overwhelmed. Counseling waitlists stretch for months. The result is a student experience marked by delay, confusion, and denial—not because schools can’t do better, but because they choose not to.
This isn't just negligence. It is institutional betrayal. Colleges and universities advertise themselves as spaces of care, opportunity, and transformation, but then they abandon students when they are most vulnerable. The betrayal is especially cruel because it wears the mask of benevolence. The smiling brochures, the mission statements, the student-first slogans—all serve as cover for a business model that exploits rather than supports.
Meanwhile, respected voices in academia are stepping away from this battlefield. Steven Mintz’s recent farewell to Inside Higher Ed exemplifies this retreat. He chooses to move toward quieter explorations of literature, aesthetic experience, and cultural inquiry. While his Substack musings on Bob Dylan, T. S. Eliot, and the inner life of students may be intellectually rich, they avoid the urgent reality facing most people in higher education today. The house is on fire, and some of our most thoughtful voices are choosing to paint watercolors instead of sounding the alarm.
But who benefits from this design? Not students. Not faculty. Not families. The winners are university executives, educational tech vendors, loan servicers, and financiers. These stakeholders thrive in a system where services are minimal and revenues are maximized. It’s no coincidence that tuition climbs as instruction quality declines, or that the most visible innovation in higher ed is financial packaging, not pedagogical reform.
And above it all, the rich and powerful quietly reap the benefits. They need their soldiers, and underfunded community colleges and for-profit trade schools supply them. They need their sex workers, and the crushing weight of student debt pushes desperate students into survival economies, including cam work and transactional relationships. They need a compliant, credentialed workforce that is obedient, overworked, and drowning in debt—unable to organize, challenge authority, or dream of another way. What they do not need is a generation of radical thinkers or empowered critics. They do not want philosophy majors with housing security or history graduates with zero debt. They want streamlined, segmented, and indebted labor—perfectly positioned to serve, not to resist.
Higher education is not broken. It is operating exactly as designed, serving the interests of power while selling the illusion of mobility. The rhetoric of opportunity masks the machinery of extraction. Every unpaid internship, every unanswered financial aid ticket, every overwhelmed advisor is a cog in that machine.
Real reform won’t come from think pieces about ambiguity or nostalgia for the humanities. It will come from student and worker organizing. From lawsuits and public exposés. From demanding transparency and refusing to be treated as liabilities. From confronting the fact that this system is not failing. It is succeeding at doing precisely what it was built to do.
Until that truth is widely recognized, students will keep being misled, mismanaged, and monetized—by design.
The Higher Education Inquirer will continue to name that design and expose those who profit from it.
Steven Mintz’s Exit from Inside Higher Ed: A Thoughtful Retreat or Quiet Surrender?
After more than a decade of weekly columns on the shifting terrain of academia, Steven Mintz—professor, public intellectual, and longtime contributor to Inside Higher Ed—has stepped away from his platform, “Higher Ed Gamma.” In his farewell post, Mintz characterizes the move as a philosophical shift, not a retreat. But for those engaged in the daily battles to defend the public mission of higher education, his withdrawal from one of the few widely read, accessible venues for higher ed critique feels like something else: a concession at a moment when visibility and resistance are needed more than ever.
Mintz says he is no longer as interested in “reacting to headlines,” preferring instead to explore the quieter realms of cultural inquiry—grappling with themes like grief, historical consciousness, and the inner lives of students through essays on Bob Dylan, T. S. Eliot, and opera. His transition to Substack, where he will continue to write freely and thoughtfully, signals an intentional shift toward what he calls “a different rhythm.”
But what happens when thought leaders retreat from public forums just as the foundations of higher education are being dismantled?
Mintz’s departure from Inside Higher Ed comes amid a historic and escalating assault on higher education’s core values: the elimination of DEI programs, political meddling in public institutions, massive layoffs, closures of small colleges, and a crisis of labor precarity among adjuncts and graduate students. It is a time of culture war, economic shock, and administrative capture—one that demands vigilance, confrontation, and critical dialogue. The silence of well-respected voices like Mintz, even when artfully composed, leaves a vacuum at precisely the wrong moment.
To be sure, Mintz has always occupied an ambiguous space in the higher ed discourse: never quite a radical, but often reflective and open to challenging assumptions. He offered important insights about student success, the role of the humanities, and institutional reform. But his columns were also marked by a cautious optimism that sometimes failed to account for the structural brutality many faculty, staff, and students experience daily—from exploitative adjunct labor to debt peonage and corporate takeovers of the academy.
In retreating from Inside Higher Ed—a public-facing, open-access platform—and into Substack, a more insular, self-selecting venue, Mintz risks preaching to a smaller choir. His musings on literature, aesthetics, and ambiguity, while intellectually rich, come at the cost of direct engagement with the high-stakes political and economic struggles now engulfing academia. In a word: the move feels safe.
But there is no safety for the contingent instructor evicted from their job mid-semester. No retreat for students saddled with unpayable debt. No intellectual sanctuary for librarians, counselors, and staff facing layoffs. The reality of higher ed today demands more than reflective essays on opera and poetry; it demands solidarity, analysis, and resistance.
To be fair, Mintz is not abandoning the field entirely. He promises to continue writing “sometimes about higher ed, sometimes about what it means to be human.” That is a noble aim. But as the privatization and defunding of higher education accelerate, and as faculty governance erodes in favor of corporate management, the fight to preserve the very possibility of the humanities and liberal inquiry depends on public intellectuals remaining in the arena, not retreating to side chambers of culture.
Mintz closes his farewell with an affirmation that “education—real education—is still worth defending.” We agree. But the defense requires more than aesthetic reflection. It requires naming enemies, calling out injustice, and staying embedded in the public struggles that define this moment in American education.
For those of us who continue the work of muckraking, exposing inequality, and sounding alarms about the corporatization of the university, Mintz’s exit from Inside Higher Ed is less a turning of the page than a missed opportunity to stand firm. The page is burning, and too many are still waiting for the writers to put out the fire.
Without a Union, Expect More Layoffs: Southern New Hampshire University Employees Face Corporate Restructuring and Uncertainty
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), once hailed as a pioneer in online learning and educational innovation, is now facing growing unrest among employees as the institution continues down a path of corporate-style restructuring. Recent anonymous posts from internal forums reveal widespread fear, frustration, and anger following another round of layoffs—despite the university publicly celebrating its financial milestones.
“We are no longer people at SNHU—we’re financial liabilities,” one employee wrote. “Update your resumes. Prepare for the worst.”
The layoffs, reportedly targeting senior staff and long-time employees, come on the heels of previous job cuts last year—cuts that were soon followed by executive bonuses. Employees describe this tactic as a way to soften the blow while giving the remaining workforce a false sense of stability. That illusion, insiders say, is long gone.
This is no longer the institution led by Paul LeBlanc, the former president widely respected for his student- and staff-centered approach. Since the transition to President Lisa Marsh Ryerson, many employees say the university’s priorities have shifted toward financial engineering and aggressive cost-cutting.
One employee remarked, “Lisa’s mission is to operate the university like a business where dollars mean more than the people who made the university what it is. This would have never happened under Paul’s leadership.”
Even as SNHU publicly announced it had met its 6% financial growth target, more jobs were slashed—raising questions about the true motivation behind the downsizing. “Can we expect layoffs every nine months moving forward?” another asked.
A disturbing pattern is emerging: layoffs before the fiscal year closes, speculation about keeping operations just shy of the $1 billion revenue threshold, and vague communications about “regular assessments,” interpreted by employees as a euphemism for frequent cuts.
Adding to the frustration are apparent contradictions between internal messaging and actual spending. A former ITS (Information Technology Services) staffer recounted that for over a year before the layoffs began, leadership warned technical teams—especially at University Management (UM)—about “just keeping the lights on.” However, these austerity signals were contradicted by internal requests to research high-cost specialty equipment for UM ITS staff. “I guess the lights aren’t that important to her,” the employee said, referencing CF, a decision-maker believed to have pushed the tech purchases despite the budget warnings.
This kind of internal inconsistency is emblematic of the confusion and distrust now rampant among SNHU staff. Mixed signals, strategic ambiguity, and cost-cutting cloaked in business jargon have eroded morale.
The Missing Shield: Why SNHU Workers Need a Labor Union
At the heart of SNHU’s internal crisis is the glaring absence of worker protection. Simply put: without a union, there is no defense against what’s coming next.
Layoffs. Outsourcing. Pay stagnation. Arbitrary restructuring. All of these are happening in the dark, without employee input, transparency, or any mechanism to push back. At SNHU—despite its size and influence—there is no faculty or staff union. And that leaves every worker vulnerable.
A labor union would change the power dynamics. With collective bargaining rights, employees could demand transparency in budgeting, negotiate job protections, and ensure that executive bonuses are not prioritized over staff livelihoods. Unions also provide grievance procedures, democratic voice in institutional decisions, and solidarity against exploitative management practices.
The pattern at SNHU is clear: it’s not a temporary adjustment—it’s a business model. A model that treats human beings as “cost centers” to be trimmed, regardless of their contributions or years of service.
One employee wrote, “They’re going to outsource everything they can.” Without a union, there’s little stopping that from happening.
While public university systems often have unionized faculty and staff with some degree of insulation from abrupt cuts, SNHU’s private, nonprofit status allows leadership to operate with near-total discretion. The only viable counterbalance is organized labor.
If SNHU employees want to end the cycle of fear, protect their jobs, and begin rebuilding an institution that values people, they will need more than nostalgia for past leadership—they will need solidarity, and a union to anchor it.
The warning is clear. And the lesson is simpler still: without a union, expect more layoffs.
Songs for the Student Loan Struggle
In the United States, where over 43 million people carry more than $1.7 trillion in student debt, it’s no wonder that the crisis has made its way into the bloodstream of American music. Across genres—hip-hop, punk, folk, pop, indie, and beyond—artists have given voice to the quiet desperation and loud frustration of a generation who bought the dream of higher education, only to find themselves overworked, underpaid, and perpetually in debt.
Student loans aren’t just a financial burden—they’re a cultural trauma. They delay marriages and children, block homeownership, exacerbate mental health struggles, and fuel cycles of economic precarity. For many, they are the symbol of a promise broken. Music has become one of the only honest mirrors left—naming what politicians won’t and exposing what marketing campaigns obscure.
Few songs capture this generational malaise as directly as Twenty One Pilots’ “Stressed Out.” In one of its most pointed lines, Tyler Joseph sings:
“Out of student loans and treehouse homes we all would take the latter.”
The lyric, delivered like a casual aside, cuts to the heart of the matter. The dream of adulthood has been replaced by nostalgia for childhood. Treehouse homes—imaginary, fragile, idealized—are preferred to the very real pressure of loans that never seem to shrink. The song became an anthem not just because of its catchy hook, but because it gave voice to a shared longing to escape a system that feels rigged from the start.
In folk and Americana, the tradition of protest lives on through artists like David Rovics, who sings candidly about capitalism, debt, and the false promise of meritocracy. Anaïs Mitchell’s “Why We Build the Wall,” from Hadestown, offers a parable of entrapment that mirrors the moral logic behind lifelong indebtedness—“we build the wall to keep us free,” the characters insist, as they cage themselves in the name of security.
Hip-hop, born from systemic exclusion, has long offered some of the most unflinching commentary on education, class, and race. Dee-1’s “Sallie Mae Back” is a rare moment of triumph—his celebration of paying off his loans is joyful, but also revealing: the milestone is treated like beating a boss in a video game, an exceptional feat in a system designed to trap. Meanwhile, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, and Noname have all touched on the disillusionment that comes from pursuing education and still being locked out of wealth and opportunity.
In the indie and emo scenes, debt doesn’t always appear as a headline—it’s in the background, a persistent hum of dread. Phoebe Bridgers’ ballads of suspended adulthood and unfulfilled expectations capture the emotional aftermath of investing in a future that hasn’t arrived. Bright Eyes’ early 2000s work resonated with disaffected students who already sensed that the system was cracking. Their songs are not about loans explicitly, but about what loans represent: being stuck, being lied to, being tired.
Punk, true to form, skips subtlety. DIY bands across the country scream out titles like “Broke and Educated” and “Loan Shark Nation” to crowds of kids who know the words by heart. These songs aren’t just cathartic—they’re organizing tools, naming the shared betrayal of a generation taught that college was a way out. Instead, it became a life sentence.
Country music has added its voice too, quietly but powerfully. Artists like Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers have used old-school storytelling to critique modern economic realities. Their characters are often trying to make ends meet in a world that seems designed to keep them down, and college debt is one of many invisible fences. Kacey Musgraves, in her ballads of broken dreams and gentle rebellion, speaks to the emotional toll of chasing a version of success that was never really for us.
In pop and R&B, the mood shifts but the themes remain. Lizzo’s affirmations of self-worth have become survival anthems for those trying to thrive despite systemic sabotage. Billie Eilish, with her whispered melancholy, captures the numbness that often follows years of grinding toward a goal that keeps moving.
Even instrumental genres reflect the weight of education debt. Jazz musicians and conservatory-trained artists emerge with six-figure loans and few stable jobs. Their music may not name the debt, but it carries its echoes—in the tension, the improvisation, the repetition of unresolved progressions.
Taken together, these songs form a shadow archive of student debt in America. This is not a playlist of protest songs in the traditional sense, but a collective cultural record of what it feels like to be promised opportunity and handed obligation. To be sold a degree and saddled with interest. To be told to work hard, only to discover the rules were never fair.
Twenty One Pilots’ “Stressed Out” may have sounded playful on first listen. But for many borrowers, that line about choosing treehouses over loans is all too real. It’s a cry for retreat—but also a quiet act of rebellion. It reminds us that the system has failed and that we are not alone in feeling crushed by its weight.
Let the music play. Let it say what policymakers won’t. Let it remind us that while the loans may be individual, the struggle is collective—and the chorus of resistance is still growing louder.
[Editor's note: A 2019 version of this article is here.]
Playlist: Songs for the Student Loan Struggle
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Stressed Out – Twenty One Pilots
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Sallie Mae Back – Dee-1
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Why We Build the Wall – Anaïs Mitchell
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Brackets – J. Cole
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Alright – Kendrick Lamar
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Broke and Educated – DIY punk band (Bandcamp)
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Kyoto – Phoebe Bridgers
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Landlocked Blues – Bright Eyes
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Call to Arms – Sturgill Simpson
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High Horse – Kacey Musgraves
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Truth Hurts – Lizzo
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everything i wanted – Billie Eilish
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Guillotine – Death Grips
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Everything Can Change – David Rovics
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Good as Hell – Lizzo
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We Are Nowhere and It’s Now – Bright Eyes
AFSCME Municipal Workers Local 33 (Philadelphia) on Strike
Scientific Publishers Flooded with Fake Research: A Growing Crisis in Academia
A recent article in Het Financieele Dagblad (FD) has exposed a deepening crisis within the academic publishing world: a tidal wave of fraudulent research papers infiltrating scientific journals. These papers, often generated by so-called "paper mills," represent a form of organized academic fraud that is overwhelming the traditional safeguards of scholarly publishing. The consequences are dire, not just for publishers and researchers, but for the integrity of science itself.
Scientific publishers are increasingly struggling to detect and stop the flow of fabricated articles. In 2023 alone, more than 10,000 papers were retracted globally—a record high that signals a broken system under immense strain. At the heart of the problem are industrial-scale operations that mass-produce articles, manipulate data and images, and even sell authorship to desperate or unscrupulous academics. The incentives are clear: in countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, India, and Iran, academic advancement is frequently tied to publication metrics, with researchers pressured to publish frequently, regardless of quality. This "publish or perish" culture is not limited to these countries—it has become a global phenomenon that distorts academic priorities and undermines the values of honest scholarship.
Some of the world’s most established publishers are now being forced to act decisively. Wiley, one of the largest academic publishers, recently shut down 19 journals and retracted more than 11,000 articles—primarily from its Hindawi imprint—as part of a sweeping response to paper mill infiltration. These actions follow investigations revealing widespread manipulation of peer review, citation rings, and the use of template-based writing tools designed to mimic legitimate scientific prose. Other publishers have followed suit, quietly retracting hundreds of suspicious papers and investing in forensic software to detect plagiarism, image manipulation, and statistical anomalies.
What makes this crisis particularly alarming is the erosion of public trust in science and higher education. When fraudulent papers appear in supposedly peer-reviewed journals, the entire academic enterprise is called into question. Resources—both financial and intellectual—are wasted as real researchers chase the ghosts of fake findings, sometimes basing their own work on completely fabricated data. This undermines the credibility of entire disciplines and can have far-reaching effects, especially in areas such as biomedical research, public health, and environmental science.
In response, publishers are deploying increasingly sophisticated tools, including artificial intelligence, to flag suspicious manuscripts. Programs like the Problematic Paper Screener and Papermill Alarm are being used to scan thousands of articles for telltale signs of fraud. However, these technological solutions are playing catch-up to a rapidly evolving problem. Some journals have also established editorial task forces focused solely on fraud detection, and industry-wide collaboration is beginning to take shape. Watchdog organizations such as Retraction Watch continue to highlight egregious cases, drawing attention to a problem that still receives too little scrutiny in mainstream academia.
The FD article makes clear that the fight against paper mills is not just about bad actors; it’s about a system that rewards quantity over quality. Until institutions, funders, and governments change the metrics by which academic success is measured, the paper mill industry will continue to thrive. The push for more rigorous standards, better peer review, and a reorientation toward research integrity must become a priority, especially for university leaders and regulators.
At the Higher Education Inquirer, we’ve tracked many scandals across higher education—from student loan exploitation to for-profit college fraud—but the explosion of fake science is especially insidious. It reaches into the very foundation of higher learning and research. If we fail to address it systemically, the damage could be lasting. Scientific knowledge is built incrementally, and when falsehoods pollute the record, progress grinds to a halt—or worse, proceeds on false premises.
The academic community must confront this crisis with transparency and resolve. Anything less would be a betrayal of the public trust and of the countless researchers striving to produce knowledge that genuinely advances our understanding of the world.
Forced Birth, Broken Systems: What Happens When Medicaid Is Cut, Planned Parenthood Is Defunded, Abortion Is Illegal, and Pell Grants Are Slashed
The United States is entering a reproductive and economic crisis with profound and long-lasting effects, not only on public health but on higher education, labor markets, and the basic social contract. With proposed Medicaid cuts threatening to remove 11 to 14 million people from coverage, the defunding of Planned Parenthood already underway in multiple states, abortion outlawed or criminalized in much of the country, and Pell Grants—long the financial lifeline for working-class students—now on the chopping block, the consequences for vulnerable Americans are becoming existential.
Medicaid currently funds 43 percent of all births in the United States, serving as a critical support system for low-income families and especially for women of reproductive age. Cutting this program will mean millions of people, including many students, will lose access to contraception, prenatal care, or safe childbirth. The simultaneous defunding of Planned Parenthood eliminates one of the few affordable sources of reproductive healthcare for millions more, including STI testing and abortion referrals. In states where abortion is now illegal or nearly impossible to access, people without resources are being forced into parenthood—regardless of age, circumstance, health risks, or consent.
The result is not a resurgence of “family values” but a public health disaster. Maternal and infant mortality will rise, especially among Black, Indigenous, and Latina women who already face disproportionate risk. Rural and underfunded hospitals will be pushed to the brink, taking on a wave of uncompensated labor and delivery cases they cannot afford. Many of these same states reject Medicaid expansion and other social supports, leaving poor women and their children with no safety net at all.
And now, the same lawmakers pushing forced birth are demanding cuts to federal student aid. Pell Grants, the cornerstone of college affordability for low-income students, are under threat of restructuring and reduction—some proposals aim to tie eligibility to higher credit loads or academic benchmarks that working students with family responsibilities often cannot meet. Forcing students to take 15 credits a semester to qualify for full funding, while stripping away healthcare, reproductive autonomy, and economic security, creates an impossible trap. The cruelty is calculated.
The consequences for college students—especially women, people of color, and those from working-class backgrounds—will be devastating. A student who becomes pregnant without access to abortion and Medicaid may be forced to carry the pregnancy to term without adequate medical care. Without affordable childcare or family support, many will be unable to complete their degrees. Financially, these students face lifelong setbacks: medical debt, increased student loans, and diminished earning potential.
Planned Parenthood has long been a crucial resource for college students seeking contraception, health screenings, or reproductive counseling. Mental health will suffer across campuses, with increased trauma, anxiety, and depression tied to forced pregnancy, criminalization, and economic desperation. College counseling centers are not equipped to manage this crisis.
Criminalization of abortion and related care also threatens student safety and autonomy. Students could face surveillance, arrest, or disciplinary action for seeking abortion pills, traveling out of state for care, or even sharing information. Faculty and staff may be legally targeted for offering assistance or referrals. The chilling effect on campuses will be immediate and severe, undermining both student health and academic freedom.
Meanwhile, slashing Pell Grants will make college completely unaffordable for thousands. Many will be forced to take out higher-interest loans—or drop out altogether. These financial constraints will disproportionately affect students at community colleges and regional public universities, the very institutions most likely to serve student parents and low-income learners. With every cut to Pell, with every denial of childcare, with every forced birth, the ladder of social mobility collapses further.
This is not just a reproductive rights issue or an education issue. It is a deliberate strategy of control and abandonment. The same communities being forced into parenthood are being stripped of the tools to escape poverty—higher education, healthcare, and bodily autonomy. This is economic warfare dressed in moral righteousness. And it is reshaping the future of who gets to survive, succeed, or dream in America.
Colleges and universities cannot remain silent. Faculty, administrators, and student organizations must speak out against the coordinated assault on reproductive freedom and educational access. Campus activism is already rising, but it is likely to be met with increased repression—funding cuts, surveillance, and political intimidation. Institutions that claim to support equity, justice, and student success must match words with action.
This moment demands more than statements and symbolic gestures. It requires direct resistance and solidarity. It requires fighting for healthcare as a human right, for fully funded Pell Grants and student supports, and for the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one’s own body and future.
In this looming dystopia—where reproductive autonomy is criminalized, education is devalued, and poverty is legislated—the very notion of a democratic and just society is at risk. If higher education is to mean anything at all, it must stand against this assault. Otherwise, it becomes just another engine in the machinery of inequality and control.
Higher Education Inquirer's Long History, Sudden Rise
Since its founding in 2016, the Higher Education Inquirer has steadily established itself as a reliable, independent source for reporting on the less visible dimensions of American higher education. With a focus on institutional decline, labor conditions, and the growing influence of private interests, the publication has grown from a modest blog into a respected outlet for analysis and first-hand accounts. In June 2025, it surpassed 150,000 views, a milestone that reflects both the persistence of its contributors and the relevance of its subject matter.
HEI's development can be traced through its evolving approach to research and storytelling. In its early years, it introduced the phrase college meltdown to describe the financial and enrollment stress afflicting many institutions, particularly small colleges and for-profits. It later popularized the term edugrift, referring to the role of consultants, investors, and online program managers whose involvement in the sector often escapes scrutiny. These terms were not intended for provocation, but as practical shorthand—frameworks for understanding trends that might otherwise be overlooked or mischaracterized.
Throughout its reporting, the Inquirer has placed a premium on documentation and primary sources. Public records, government datasets, and legal filings form the basis of many investigations. Contributions from whistleblowers have added firsthand depth, while independent experts have offered context and critique. Collectively, these elements have allowed the publication to trace patterns not always visible from press releases or institutional communications.
The work has been shaped by a small group of persistent writers and researchers. In addition to its founding contributors, the platform has featured the voices of David Halperin, Henry Giroux, Bryan Alexander, Michael Hainline, Gary Roth, and Annelise Orleck. Each brings a different lens—legal, sociological, historical—but shares a commitment to rigor and accessibility.
Rather than emphasizing single events, the Higher Education Inquirer has tended to focus on slow-moving structural change: the decline in enrollment at non-selective institutions, the tightening of state budgets, the casualization of academic labor, and the steady rise of administrative cost centers. It has also monitored the effects of algorithmic tools and automation in admissions, advising, and teaching, raising questions about accountability and oversight.
Over time, its readership has broadened to include students, faculty, policy analysts, and reporters seeking an alternative to promotional narratives. The site's growth has been slow but consistent, its audience largely built by word of mouth and citation.
The Inquirer has not positioned itself as a substitute for mainstream coverage, but rather as a complement—an archival and analytical space that focuses on enduring issues rather than fleeting controversies. In doing so, it has provided a place where difficult questions about the purpose and direction of higher education can be raised without distraction.
Monday, June 30, 2025
Trump’s Neg Reg to Weaponize Debt Is Here - Key Takeaways from Day 1 (Student Borrower Protection Center)
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More Guns, Less Butter: How America’s Budget Choices Are Starving Higher Education
In the halls of Washington, a familiar Cold War-era phrase has returned with renewed urgency: “guns versus butter.” But in 2025, the metaphor isn't academic—it’s reality. With the Trump administration's proposed FY2026 budget increasing defense spending to an unprecedented $1.01 trillion, educators, students, and policy advocates are warning that the nation’s commitment to higher education is being eroded at its foundation.
The proposed 13.4 percent increase in military spending includes massive investments in nuclear modernization, missile defense systems, and cyberwarfare infrastructure. Meanwhile, funding for federal student aid, university research, and college readiness programs remains stagnant or faces outright reductions. Pell Grants are flat-funded, leaving them far behind tuition inflation. Federal Work-Study allocations drop by 8 percent, limiting opportunities for low-income students. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is on the chopping block entirely.
“The message is loud and clear,” said Dr. Nina Delgado, a policy analyst at the Center for Postsecondary Equity. “We can afford another missile silo, but not math tutoring for first-generation college students.”
From regional public colleges to minority-serving institutions, campuses already suffering from years of austerity face even deeper crises. With state and federal support shrinking, tuition continues its unrelenting climb—fueling debt and pushing higher education out of reach for millions. Over 100 colleges—many of them rural or under-resourced—are on the brink of closure. Faculty layoffs and hiring freezes are becoming the norm, especially in the humanities. Community colleges, a key engine for workforce training, are operating at a deficit in 27 states.
Supporters of the military expansion argue that defense is a prerequisite for national security. But critics counter that America’s long-term strength lies in knowledge, innovation, and human capital—assets developed not in weapons labs, but in classrooms. “You can’t bomb your way to a competitive economy,” said Jason Rahim, a University of Vermont economics professor. “We’re starving the very institutions that fuel research, educate workers, and foster democratic thinking.”
As the U.S. crosses the $1 trillion defense spending threshold, the nation’s crumbling lecture halls and shuttered library doors tell a different story—one where the greatest threats to national security may not be foreign adversaries, but domestic neglect. Until Congress reinvests in the public good—particularly in equitable, accessible higher education—America may find itself armed to the teeth but intellectually disarmed.
The Worst Bill in History: Trump’s giant budget-busting, Medicaid-shattering, shafting-the-poor-and-working-class, making-the-rich-even richer bill is a travesty. (Robert Reich)
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Friends,
One of my objectives in this daily letter is to equip you with the facts you need. As the Senate approaches a vote on Trump’s giant “big beautiful” tax and budget bill, I want to be as clear as possible about it.
First, it will cost a budget-busting $3.3 trillion. According to new estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to the already out-of-control national debt over a decade. That’s nearly $1 trillion more than the House-passed version.
Second, it will cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their health coverage. The Senate version would result in even deeper cuts in federal support for health insurance, and more Americans losing coverage, than the House version. Federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare would be reduced by more than $1.1 trillion over that period — with more than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid alone.
All told, this will leave 11.8 million more Americans uninsured by 2034.
Third, it will cut food stamps and other nutrition assistance for lower-income Americans. According to the CBO, the legislation will not only cut Medicaid by about 18 percent, it will cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) by roughly 20 percent. These cuts will constitute the most dramatic reductions in safety net spending in modern U.S. history.
Fourth, it will overwhelmingly benefit the rich and big corporations. The CBO projects that those in the bottom tenth of the income distribution will end up poorer, while the top tenth will be substantially richer.
The bill also makes permanent the business tax cuts from the 2017 legislation, further benefiting the largest corporations.
Finally, it will not help the economy. Trickle-down economics has proven to be a cruel hoax. Over the last 50 years, Congress has passed four major bills that cut taxes: the 1981 Reagan tax cuts; the 2001 and 2003 George W. Bush tax cuts; and the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Each time, the same three arguments were made in favor of the tax cuts: (1) They’d pay for themselves. (2) They’d supercharge economic growth. (3) They’d benefit everyone.
All have been proven wrong. Here’s what in fact happened:
(1) Did the tax cuts pay for themselves?
No. Rather than paying for themselves, the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts each significantly increased the federal deficit. In total, those tax cuts have added over $10.4 trillion to the federal deficit since 1981 compared to the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline projections.
(2) Did the tax cuts supercharge economic growth, create millions of jobs, and raise wages?
Absolutely not. Rather than growing, the economy shrank after passage of the Reagan tax cuts. And unemployment surged to over 10 percent. Following the enactment of the Bush and Trump tax cuts, the economy did grow a bit, but at rates much lower than their supporters predicted.
(3) Did the tax cuts benefit everyone?
Heavens, no. Rather than benefiting everyone, the savings from the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts flowed mainly to the richest Americans. The average tax cut for households in the top 1 percent under the Reagan tax cut ($47,147) was 68 times larger than the average tax cut for middle-class households ($695). The Bush tax cut for households in the top 1 percent was 16 times larger than the average tax cut for the middle class. The 2017 Trump tax cut for households in the top 1 percent was 36 times larger than for middle-class households.
Summary: If the bill now being considered by the Senate is enacted, 11.8 million Americans will lose their health insurance, millions will fall into poverty, and the national debt will increase by $3.3 trillion, all to provide a major tax cut mainly to the rich and big corporations. There is no justification for this.
Never before in the history of this nation has such a large redistribution of income been directed upward, for no reason at all. It comes at a time of near-record inequalities of income and wealth.
What you can do: Call your senators and tell them to vote “no” on this calamitous tax and budget bill. Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121.
Beyond this, help ensure that senators who vote in favor of this monstrosity are booted out of the Senate as soon as they’re up for reelection.
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