Nonprofits and Nothingness: Follow the Money

In the world of higher education and its orbiting industries—veteran-serving nonprofits, student-debt advocacy groups, educational charities, “policy” organizations, and campus-focused foundations—there is a great deal of motion but not always much movement. Press releases bloom, awards are distributed, partnerships are announced, and donors beam from stages and annual reports. Yet too often, the people who most need substantive support—servicemembers, student-loan borrowers, contingent faculty, low-income students, and other working-class communities—receive only fragments of what the glossy brochures promise.

To understand why, you need only follow the money.

  

The Neoliberal Philanthropy Trap

Over the last four decades, American nonprofit culture has been reshaped and disciplined by neoliberal capital. So-called “impact philanthropy” and “venture philanthropy” introduced a corporate mindset: donors expect brand alignment, flattering metrics, and ideological safety. The result is a nonprofit sector that frequently mimics the institutions it claims to critique.

Organizations become risk-averse. They avoid structural analysis. They sidestep direct confrontation with the powerful. They produce white papers instead of organizing. They praise the very elite funders who limit their scope.

The most severe problems facing servicemembers and veterans—predatory for-profit schools, Pentagon-to-college corruption pipelines, GI Bill waste, chronic under-support—rarely get the oxygen they deserve. Advocacy groups that rely on neoliberal donors often focus on “financial literacy” workshops rather than taking on the multi-billion-dollar scams that actually trap servicemembers in debt.

Student-debt nonprofits, similarly, lean into “awareness campaigns” and technocratic fixes that avoid challenging lenders, profiteering institutions, or federal policy failures. Many will deliver testimonials and infographics, but few will call out the philanthropic class whose own investments are entangled in servicing and securitizing student debt.

And when it comes to helping working-class people more broadly—those navigating food insecurity, unstable housing, wage stagnation, and the crushing costs of education—the nonprofit sector too often does what neoliberal donors prefer: it performs compassion rather than redistributing power. It focuses on individual resilience rather than collective remedy.
Appearance Over Impact

This creates a strange ecosystem in which organizations are rewarded for looking productive rather than for being productive.

• Events over empowerment.
• Reports over results.
• Branding over coalition-building.
• Strategy sessions over structural change.

The donor’s name gets its plaque, its press release, its tax receipt. The nonprofit gets to survive another cycle. But the problems—deep, persistent, systemic—remain unchallenged.

Nonprofits that speak too directly about exploitation in higher education risk alienating the very people who write the checks. Some are nudged away from naming predatory universities. Others are steered toward “innovation,” “entrepreneurship,” or “student success” frameworks that sanitize the underlying issues. Many are encouraged to “partner” with the same institutions harming the people they were formed to help.

In the end, we get a sector filled with earnest staff but hollowed-out missions—organizations doing just enough to appear active but rarely enough to threaten the arrangement that keeps donors comfortable and inequality intact.

 
What Could Be—If Nonprofits Were Free

Imagine a nonprofit sector liberated from neoliberal constraints:
Organizations could openly challenge predatory colleges instead of courting them as sponsors.
Veteran-serving groups could expose fraud rather than “collaborate” with federal contractors.
Debt-advocacy groups could organize mass borrower actions rather than hold polite policy forums.
Working-class students could find allies who fight for public investment, not piecemeal philanthropy.

We could have watchdogs instead of window dressing.
We could have mobilization instead of marketing.
We could have justice instead of jargon.

But as long as donor-driven nonprofits prioritize appearance over impact, we’re left with what might be called “nonprofits and nothingness”: organizations whose glossy public-facing work obscures the emptiness underneath.

 
The Way Forward: Independent, Ground-Up Power

Real change in higher education—on affordability, accountability, labor rights, and fairness—will not come from donor-managed nonprofits. It will come from independent journalism, grassroots organizing, debt-resistance movements, student-worker coalitions, and communities willing to challenge elite decision-makers directly.

Those efforts don’t fit neatly into annual reports. They don’t flatter philanthropists. They don’t offer easy wins. But they build the kind of power that higher education, and the country, desperately needs.

Until more nonprofits break free from the neoliberal donor leash, we should continue to follow the money—and then look beyond it, to the people whose work actually changes lives.

Sources
— Eikenberry, Angela. The Nonprofit Sector in an Age of Marketization.
— Giridharadas, Anand. Winners Take All.
— Reich, Rob. Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy.

The Prestige of Partnership — and the Problem of Unclear Payoff

For more than a decade, 2U has presented itself as a premier intermediary between elite universities and the expanding global audience for online higher education. The company’s roster of partners includes some of the most recognizable names in academia, as well as a growing list of selective, mid-tier, and international institutions. On its public site, 2U highlights collaborations with universities such as Yale, Northwestern, North Carolina–Chapel Hill, Pepperdine, Maryville, and the University of Surrey. The message is unmistakable: if universities of this caliber trust 2U with their online programs, then students should as well.

These partnerships have fueled the impression that 2U-supported programs deliver high-quality, academically rigorous education backed by prestigious institutional brands. For many learners, especially working adults, international students, and career switchers, such arrangements offer a seemingly ideal blend: the name of an elite university, the flexibility of online learning, and access to fields where credentials are increasingly necessary.

Yet beneath the glossy presentation and impressive partner list, fundamental questions remain unanswered. Despite working with many of the world’s most respected institutions, 2U still does not provide sufficient data to determine the true value of the programs it supports. Even as universities lend their names and curricula, the real-world outcomes of students enrolled in 2U-powered programs remain opaque.

The core difficulty lies in the mismatch between the prestige of the institution and the limited transparency around program performance. For years, 2U issued annual “Transparency and Outcomes” reports designed to demonstrate impact and accountability across its portfolio. But the most recent report available to the public is from 2023. In the fast-moving world of online education—where competition has intensified, student expectations have shifted, and 2U itself has undergone significant financial turmoil—data that old is no longer a reliable indicator of the current state of programs.

This lack of updated reporting is especially notable given 2U’s recent trajectory. After years of rising debt and declining investor confidence, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2024. Although it has since emerged under new ownership with a streamlined balance sheet, questions persist about its future direction, the stability of its services, and whether its partnerships will endure in their current form. For universities, outsourcing key functions such as marketing, recruitment, student support, and technological infrastructure may expand enrollment and revenue, but it also raises concerns about the consistency and quality of the student experience—areas that become even more vulnerable when the partner company faces financial strain.

This structural opacity makes it nearly impossible for students, policymakers, or even universities themselves to determine whether these programs provide a meaningful return on investment. A degree or certificate bearing the name of Yale or Pepperdine may confer a level of brand recognition, but what does it signify in practice? Are students completing programs at comparable rates to on-campus peers? Are they finding jobs in their fields? Are they earning more than they would have without the credential? Are they satisfied with the instruction, advising, and support they receive? Without rigorous, current, and independently verified data, these remain open—and critical—questions.

The challenge is not solely financial or operational. It is also conceptual. The surge in online learning has created a vast gray zone between institutional brand and educational substance. While universities retain control over academic content, the underlying delivery mechanisms are increasingly intermediated by firms like 2U. Students may assume that an online master’s degree from a prestigious university carries the same weight as an on-campus equivalent, but the learning environments, student services, and community-building opportunities differ dramatically. In many cases, the online experience is shaped more by 2U’s systems and staff than by the university itself.

For prospective students, the implication is clear: a well-known university name is not a guarantee of value. For universities, the stakes are equally high. Partnering with a third-party company can expand their reach, but it can also blur the boundaries of academic identity and accountability. And for anyone tracking the direction of higher education more broadly, 2U’s situation serves as a cautionary example of how prestige can mask the absence of meaningful transparency—and how quickly the economics of online learning can shift.

Until 2U produces up-to-date, independently verifiable data about program quality and student outcomes, the value of its offerings remains an open question. The partnerships look impressive. The marketing is compelling. But the evidence is missing.

---

Sources

2U Partners Page
2U 2023 Transparency and Outcomes Report
2U announcements on new degree partnerships and expansions
Washington Post coverage of 2U’s 2024 bankruptcy filing
PR Newswire statements on 2U’s financial restructuring and emergence as a private company

Higher Education and the Culture of Silence

American higher education presents itself as a beacon of truth, courage, and critical inquiry. Yet behind the marketing gloss lies a pervasive culture of silence—one that extends far beyond colleges and universities themselves. The same forces that suppress dissent on campus operate through a larger ecosystem of nonprofits, contractors, ed-tech companies, and “public-private partnerships” that orbit higher ed. Together, they form a network of institutional interests that reward secrecy, punish whistleblowers, and prioritize reputation and revenue over honesty and accountability.

At the center of this system are nondisclosure agreements. NDAs are now standard tools not only in universities, but in the foundations that support them, the think tanks that shape education policy, and the ed-tech corporations that extract profit from student data and public subsidies. Whether a case involves workplace retaliation, fraudulent recruitment, financial misconduct, algorithmic harm, or student exploitation, NDAs are used to hide patterns of abuse and protect organizations from scrutiny. What gets buried is not just information—it is the possibility of reform.

The threat of litigation is part of the same architecture. Universities, nonprofits, and ed-tech companies routinely rely on aggressive legal strategies to silence critics. Workers attempting to expose unethical contracts, deceptive marketing, or discrimination face cease-and-desist letters. Researchers who publish unflattering findings are pressured to retract or soften their conclusions. Students raising alarms about data privacy or predatory practices encounter legal intimidation disguised as “professional communication.” These organizations—flush with donor money, investor capital, or public funds—use lawsuits and threats of lawsuits as shields and weapons.

Leadership across this broader ecosystem is often weak, conflicted, or corrupt. University presidents beholden to trustees are mirrored by nonprofit executives beholden to major donors, and by ed-tech CEOs beholden to venture capital. Many leaders prioritize political favor, philanthropic relationships, and corporate growth over the public interest. They outsource accountability to law firms, PR agencies, and consulting outfits whose job is not to fix problems but to bury them.

And circulating through this system is the same cast of characters: politicians chasing influence, lawyers crafting airtight silence, consultants selling risk-mitigation strategies, bean counters manipulating data, and conmen repackaging failed ideas as “innovation.” The lines between nonprofit, corporate, and educational interests have blurred to the point of erasure. Trustees who shape campus policy sit on nonprofit boards. Ed-tech companies hire former university officials and then market themselves back to campuses. Donors direct funds through philanthropic intermediaries that simultaneously pressure institutions for access and silence.

The victims of this system—faculty, staff, gig workers in tech and nonprofit roles, graduate students, undergraduates, and even the communities surrounding campuses—are pressured to comply. They face retaliation in the form of job loss, non-renewal, demotion, academic penalties, professional blacklisting, or immigration vulnerabilities. Whistleblowers are isolated. Critics are surveilled. And when the fallout becomes too public to contain, institutions rely on payouts—quiet settlements, buyouts, and confidential agreements that allow perpetrators to move seamlessly to their next institution or company.

This culture of silence is not a collection of isolated incidents. It is a structural feature of modern higher education and the industries built around it.

But it is not unbreakable.

If you have experienced or witnessed this culture—whether in a university, a higher-ed nonprofit, or the ed-tech world—the Higher Education Inquirer invites you to share your story. You may do so publicly or anonymously. We understand the risks. We know many people cannot speak openly without jeopardizing their jobs, degrees, or health. Anonymous accounts are welcome, valued, and protected.

Your story, no matter how brief, can help illuminate the patterns that institutions spend billions to obscure. Silence is what sustains the system. Truth—shared safely and collectively—is what can dismantle it.

---

Sources

• Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness

• Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul

• Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid

• Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

• Reporting from the Higher Education Inquirer on university corruption, NDAs, donor influence, and ed-tech abuses

• Investigations into nonprofit and ed-tech misconduct published in public records, court filings, and independent journalism

University of Phoenix’s Russian Cyber Breach: Another Symptom of a System in Decline

[Editor's note: The Higher Education Inquirer has been tracking cybercrime and FAFSA fraud in higher education. In August, we covered ghost students at a number of schools. It's notable that the University of Phoenix identified the Russian cybersecurity breach the day after its parent company's Earnings Call.]

The University of Phoenix has disclosed a major Russian cyber breach that again raises serious questions about governance, infrastructure, and public accountability at one of the most scrutinized institutions in American higher education. According to the institution, the intrusion began in August 2025, when attackers exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Oracle’s E-Business Suite, the enterprise financial system the university uses to manage sensitive operational and personal data.

The breach went undetected for months. By the time University of Phoenix identified the incident on November 21, 2025, the attackers had already siphoned personal and financial information belonging to students, faculty, staff, and suppliers. The university has confirmed that the attack is part of an extortion campaign associated with the Clop ransomware gang, known for targeting large organizations running legacy Oracle and MOVEit systems.

While the university has emphasized that it is still “reviewing the impacted data,” what that means in practice is that thousands of people now face an extended period of uncertainty, waiting to learn what information—Social Security numbers, banking records, home addresses, transcripts, or vendor payment details—may now be circulating beyond the institution’s control. Because the compromised Oracle EBS platform sits at the center of finance, payroll, procurement, and accounts receivable, the range of possible exposure is significant.

The breach intersects with a larger pattern. University of Phoenix has long branded itself as a technologically adept institution serving working adults, yet this incident lays bare the vulnerabilities created by years of cost-cutting, outsourcing, and reliance on aging software. This model—common across the for-profit sector—treats cybersecurity as a compliance box rather than a core operational priority. When institutions depend on brittle infrastructure while managing large volumes of sensitive data, the result is predictable: preventable failures that impose real harm on people with little recourse.

Higher education, especially the for-profit sector, has chronically underinvested in secure, modernized systems even as it continues to collect data from some of the country’s most economically vulnerable students. The University of Phoenix breach underscores this contradiction. An institution with a long record of federal investigations, poor student outcomes, and aggressive recruiting now faces yet another crisis of trust—one that cannot be brushed aside with templated notifications or promises of future improvements.

Whether this breach becomes a catalyst for reform is uncertain. Much depends on how transparent the university chooses to be, whether it fully informs regulatory agencies, and whether affected individuals receive more than form letters and a year of credit monitoring. If prior incidents across the sector are any indication, meaningful accountability may once again be elusive.

But the stakes remain high. Breaches of this scale do not simply reflect technical flaws; they reflect policy choices. The people who pay the price are not executives or investors but students, staff, faculty, and contractors whose data is now at risk—individuals who entrusted the university with information essential to their livelihoods.

Sources
University of Phoenix public disclosure, November 2025
Oracle E-Business Suite vulnerability reporting
Clop ransomware gang activity reports
Higher education cybersecurity incident archives

College Mania: The Spell is (Almost) Broken, But Hyper-Credentialism Remains

For decades, America was gripped by college mania, a culturally and structurally manufactured frenzy that elevated higher education to near-mythical importance. Students, families, and society were swept up in the belief that a college degree guaranteed status, financial security, and social validation. This was no mere aspiration; it was a fevered obsession, fueled by marketing, rankings, policy incentives, and social pressure. Today, the spell is breaking, but the demand for credentials persists.

Historically, the term “college mania” dates to the 19th century, when historian Frederick Rudolph used it to describe the fervent founding of colleges in the United States, driven by religious zeal and civic ambition. Over time, the mania evolved. Postwar expansion of higher education through the GI Bill normalized college attendance as a societal expectation. Rankings, elite admissions, and media coverage transformed selective schools into symbols of prestige. By the early 2000s, for-profit colleges exploited the frenzy, aggressively marketing to students while federal and state policy incentivized enrollment growth over meaningful outcomes.

The early 2010s revealed the fragility of this system in what I have described as the College Meltdown: structural dysfunction, declining returns on investment, predatory practices, and neoliberal policy failures exposed the weaknesses behind the hype. At its height, college mania spun students and families into a cycle of aspiration, anxiety, and debt.

Now, even students at the most elite institutions are disengaging. Many do not attend classes, treating lectures as optional, prioritizing networking, internships, or social signaling over actual learning. This demonstrates that the spell of college mania is unraveling: prestige alone no longer guarantees engagement or meaningful educational outcomes. Families are questioning the value of expensive degrees, underemployment is rising, and alternative pathways, including vocational training, apprenticeships, and nontraditional credentials, are gaining recognition.

Yet the paradox remains: for many jobs, credentials are still required. Nursing, engineering, teaching, accounting, and countless professional roles cannot be accessed without degrees. The waning mania does not erase the need for qualifications; it simply exposes how much of the cultural obsession — the anxiety, overpaying, and overworking — was socially manufactured rather than inherently necessary for employment. Students are now forced to navigate this tension: pursuing credentials while seeking value, purpose, and meaningful learning beyond the symbol of the degree itself.

The breaking of the spell is not unique to higher education. History demonstrates that manias — economic, social, or cultural — rise and fall. College mania, once fueled by collective belief and systemic reinforcement, is now unraveling under the weight of its contradictions. Institutions must adapt by emphasizing authentic education rather than prestige, while policymakers can prioritize affordability, accountability, and outcomes. Students, in turn, may pursue paths aligned with practical skills, personal growth, and career readiness rather than chasing symbolic credentials alone.

The era of college mania may be ending, but with the spell broken comes an opportunity. Higher education can be reimagined as a system that serves public good, intellectual development, and genuine opportunity, balancing the need for credentials with the pursuit of meaningful education.

---

Sources:

Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (1962).
Frank Bruni, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania (2015).
Dahn Shaulis, Higher Education Inquirer, “College Meltdown and the Manufactured Frenzy” (2011–2025).
Stanford Law Review, Private Universities in the Public Interest (2025).
Higher Education Handbook of Theory & Research, Volume 29 (2024).
Recent reporting on student engagement, class attendance, and labor-market requirements for degrees, 2023–2025.

Acknowledging David Dayen and The American Prospect: Journalism That Refuses to Look Away

In an era when corporate media outlets increasingly shy away from stories that challenge concentrated power, The American Prospect continues to do the work that journalism was meant to do. And few journalists embody that mission more consistently than David Dayen, whose Dayen on TAP newsletters have become essential reading for anyone trying to understand the intersection of political decisions, economic power, and democratic fragility.

Dayen’s December 1st dispatch—issued on the first day of the Prospect’s end-of-year fundraising drive—is a stark reminder of what’s at stake. While many newsrooms remain content to chase horse-race narratives or the latest meme-friendly outrage, Dayen focuses on something far more consequential: the manufacturing of a new U.S. war. And not just any war, but one constructed on false premises, fueled by personal loyalties, and marketed to the public with a cynical, almost nostalgic fervor—an eerie echo of the media-manufactured Spanish-American War more than a century ago.

Dayen’s reporting lays bare just how thin the pretext is for military escalation in Venezuela. Senator Marco Rubio, long aligned with right-wing Venezuelan exile networks in South Florida, has spent years pushing for regime change. Now, with an administration receptive to grandstanding tough-on-drugs rhetoric—however untethered from reality—it appears that the machinery of war is being primed not for the public good, but to satisfy the demands of a small but politically potent constituency.

As Dayen notes, fentanyl production in Venezuela is essentially nonexistent. Yet this fabricated link becomes the hook: a narrative tailored for a president who responds more to television-ready action than to facts. The administration has already initiated lethal maritime strikes—acts that appear to violate international law—and has deployed carrier groups and thousands of troops into position. Airspace has been unilaterally “closed.” Covert operations have reportedly been authorized. The runway for a land invasion is being cleared.

And for what? As Dayen observes, the motivations seem less about drugs, oil, or geopolitical strategy than about appeasing a tight-knit circle of far-right exiles and their stateside allies. The recent judicial approval of selling Citgo to Elliott Investment Management—led by Paul Singer, a longtime Rubio supporter—only underscores the blurred line between policy and patronage.

For readers of HEI, the systemic dynamics on display are grimly familiar. Whether in for-profit higher education, the student loan industry, or the privatized machinery surrounding federal education policy, we see the same pattern: powerful interests constructing narratives that obscure accountability, extract public resources, and leave the vulnerable to bear the consequences. We watch oversight mechanisms crumble while corporate actors and political patrons consolidate influence. We see the press—at least the corporate press—fail to confront these abuses with the rigor and clarity they demand.

This is why outlets like The American Prospect matter. It’s why journalists like Dayen deserve recognition, support, and amplification. When most media organizations soften their edges to avoid offending sponsors or political gatekeepers, the Prospect continues to report with independence and moral clarity. They cover what corporate media ignores: the corrosion of democratic norms, the monetization of public policy, and the creeping normalization of war—sold to the public through marketing rather than debate.

Dayen closes his newsletter with a sobering truth: the United States no longer has an anti-war movement capable of influencing policy. What remains are fragmented groups unable to coalesce even as new conflicts are born from political vanity and elite networking. The prospect of sending young Americans to die for such small, parochial reasons should alarm anyone who still believes in democratic accountability.

At HEI, we recognize the mission that The American Prospect continues to carry. In higher education, in economic justice, in foreign policy, and in democratic governance, the Prospect stands as one of the few institutions resisting the slow slide toward rule by oligarchic narrative. Their work is vital, and Dayen’s reporting is part of the backbone that keeps it standing.

Independent journalism is not a luxury. It is an infrastructure of democracy. And in 2025, with corporate capture spreading across sectors—from colleges to Congress to media itself—we need that infrastructure more than ever.

HEI thanks David Dayen and The American Prospect for refusing to furnish the war, for scrutinizing the machinery of power, and for insisting on journalism that serves people rather than patrons.

Sources:
The American Prospect, Dayen on TAP (December 1, 2025 newsletter).

American Christmas 2025

Mass surveillance is no longer a marginal concern in American life. It is the silent architecture of a society managed from above and distrusted from below. The cameras aimed at students, workers, and the precarious class reflect a deeper spiritual, political, and moral crisis among the elites who designed the systems now monitoring the rest of us.

Universities, corporations, city governments, and federal agencies increasingly rely on surveillance tools to manage populations whose economic security has been gutted by the same leaders who now demand behavioral compliance. Cameras proliferate, keystrokes are tracked, movement is logged, and predictive algorithms follow people across campuses, workplaces, and public spaces. Yet those responsible for creating the conditions that justify surveillance—politicians, corporate boards, university trustees, executive donors, and policy consultants—operate in near total opacity. Their meetings take place behind closed doors, their decisions shielded from public scrutiny, their influence networks essentially invisible.

This is not a coincidence. It is the logical extension of a neoliberal elite culture that elevates market logic above moral obligation. As the Higher Education Inquirer documented in “How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis,” the architects of modern austerity—professionalized, credentialed, and trained in elite universities—constructed social systems that demand accountability from the poor while providing impunity for the powerful. Their policy models treat human beings as units to be managed, scored, nudged, and surveilled. Surveillance fits seamlessly into this worldview. It is the managerial substitute for solidarity.

The moral void of this elite class is perhaps most visible in the realm of healthcare. The Affordable Care Act, whatever its limitations, represented a modest attempt to affirm that healthcare is a public good and that access should not depend entirely on wealth. But the undermining of Obamacare under Donald Trump laid bare how deeply the nation’s policy culture had descended into nihilism. Trump’s efforts to gut the ACA were not about ideology or fiscal prudence; they were an expression of power for its own sake. Funding for enrollment outreach was slashed. Navigator programs were dismantled. Work requirements for Medicaid were encouraged, despite overwhelming evidence that they punished the sick and disabled. The administration promoted junk insurance plans that offered no real protection, while lawsuits were advanced to overturn the ACA entirely, even if doing so meant millions would lose coverage.

This assault revealed the moral collapse of a political and economic elite that had grown comfortable with cruelty. It was cruelty performed as policy, sanctioned by corporate donors, embraced by right-wing media, and tolerated by the broader professional class that rarely speaks out unless its own interests are threatened. Even many of the centrist neoliberal policymakers who originally shaped the ACA’s cost-sharing structure responded with timidity, reluctant to confront the underlying truth: that the American healthcare system had become an arena where profit mattered more than survival, and where surveillance of the poor replaced accountability for the rich.

As traditional moral frameworks lose their authority—whether organized religion, civic duty, or shared ethical narratives—many Americans have drifted into agnosticism or atheism not enriched by humanist values, but hollowed out by a sense of futility. Without a shared moral anchor, people retreat into private meaning or abandon meaning altogether. In this void, conspiracy theories flourish. People know they are lied to. They sense power operating behind closed doors. They see elite institutions fail repeatedly without consequence. When institutions offer no transparency, alternatives emerge in the shadows.

The elite response is predictable: condemn conspiracies, scold the public for irrationality, invoke the language of “misinformation.” But this reaction deepens the divide. The same elites who created opaque systems—financial, academic, political, and technological—now fault ordinary people for trying to make sense of the opacity. In a society where truth is managed, measured, branded, and optimized, conspiracy becomes a form of folk epistemology. It is not always correct, but it is often understandable.

Mass surveillance is therefore not the root of the crisis but its mirror. It reflects a ruling class that no longer commands moral authority and a public that no longer trusts the institutions governing it. It reflects a society that treats the vulnerable as suspects and the powerful as untouchable. It reflects a political order in which the dismantling of healthcare protections is permissible while the monitoring of poor people’s bodies, behaviors, and spending is normalized.

If the United States is to escape this downward spiral, the cameras must eventually be turned upward. Transparency must apply not only to individuals but to corporations, boards, agencies, foundations, and the political donors who shape public life. Higher education must cease functioning as a credentialing arm of elite impunity and reclaim its role as a defender of democratic inquiry and human dignity. Public institutions must anchor themselves in ethical commitments that do not depend on religious dogma but arise from the basic principle that every human being deserves respect, security, and care.

Until that reconstruction begins, the nation will remain trapped. The elites will continue to rule through metrics and surveillance rather than legitimacy. The public will continue to oscillate between nihilism and suspicion. And the moral void at the center of American life will continue to widen, one camera at a time.

---

Sources

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
David Lyon, Surveillance Studies
Higher Education Inquirer, How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis
Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos
Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites
Sarah Brayne, Predict and Surveil
Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness

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 Secret and Tragic World of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a man whose name carries the weight of one of America’s most storied political dynasties. Environmentalist, activist, author, and political figure, he has long cultivated a public image of intelligence, idealism, and reform-minded zeal. Yet behind this public persona lies a deeply troubled personal history marked by tragedy, accusations of sexual misconduct, and disturbing claims of animal cruelty. With his rise to the position of Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2025, the stakes of this hidden history have grown far beyond family drama—they now intersect with public health, national science policy, and the higher education ecosystem.

Personal Tragedy and Allegations

Mary Richardson Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s second wife, died by suicide in May 2012. She was found with antidepressants in her system but no alcohol. At the time, the couple was separated, embroiled in a bitter divorce. Later-revealed documents suggest that Mary Richardson described her husband as a “sexual deviant,” alleging prescription-drug abuse and psychological manipulation, including gaslighting. She claimed he secretly recorded more than 60 phone conversations and maintained diaries documenting extramarital relationships. What may have seemed private marital discord became serious allegations of betrayal, manipulation, and emotional trauma.

In 2024, Eliza Cooney, a former live-in babysitter for the Kennedy children, publicly accused Kennedy of sexually assaulting her in the late 1990s. She described multiple incidents, including groping in a pantry, appearing shirtless in her bedroom, and being asked to rub lotion on his back. Kennedy sent Cooney a text apologizing if he had made her feel uncomfortable, claiming he had no memory of the events. Publicly, he called the allegations “a lot of garbage,” framing them as part of a “rambunctious youth” while refusing to categorically deny the events. These allegations, alongside Mary Richardson’s claims, paint a portrait of private behavior in stark contrast to the public image Kennedy has long projected.

Claims of animal cruelty have also surfaced. A 2010 photograph published in media outlets shows Kennedy with what appears to be a charred animal carcass. While Kennedy claims it was a goat from a Patagonia camping trip, a veterinarian quoted in the press suggested it could be a dog. Fact-checkers cannot conclusively identify the animal, yet the image, whether misinterpreted or not, is troubling in the context of someone who has publicly championed environmental and public health causes.

Ascension to HHS and Early Decisions

In February 2025, Kennedy was sworn in as Secretary of HHS, instantly gaining authority over national health policy, agency staffing, and public health programs. His tenure has been marked by swift, controversial moves. Kennedy launched the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) commission, aiming to address chronic disease and childhood illness, with a focus on prevention and environmental health. He has emphasized removing conflicts of interest from advisory committees, arguing that existing members often have ties to pharmaceutical companies.

Kennedy’s tenure has also included a sweeping reorganization of HHS, consolidating its 28 divisions into 15, centralizing administrative functions, and cutting staff from roughly 82,000 to 62,000 in pursuit of $1.8 billion in annual savings. He has defended these changes as necessary to streamline operations and focus on environmental toxicity, clean water, and healthy food, while critics warn they could weaken public health infrastructure and reduce oversight. Perhaps most controversially, Kennedy has moved to eliminate the long-standing practice of public comment on many HHS decisions. Other early actions have included removing expert members from CDC vaccine advisory committees and revising CDC guidance on autism and vaccines in ways aligned with Kennedy’s previously expressed views.

Higher Education and Kennedy’s Influence

Kennedy’s connection to higher education is both personal and institutional. He attended Harvard College, graduating in 1976 with a degree in American history and literature, and went on to earn a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1982. While he has no formal scientific or medical degree, his public role as HHS Secretary gives him authority over federal research funding, grants, and university partnerships.

Since taking office, Kennedy has influenced HHS grants to universities, particularly those focused on public health, environmental research, and childhood disease prevention. Reports indicate he has prioritized funding for schools conducting research aligned with his personal priorities, such as environmental toxicity, vaccine alternatives, and holistic health programs. Critics argue this approach risks politicizing federal funding, favoring institutions that align with his beliefs while disadvantaging traditional biomedical research programs. Some universities have reportedly altered research agendas to secure or maintain grants under Kennedy’s administration, raising concerns about academic independence.

Kennedy’s educational background, combined with his control over grants and research priorities, illustrates how personal ideology and public policy intersect with higher education. It underscores the stakes for universities, faculty, and students: research funding decisions now operate in a landscape influenced by a leader whose private life is controversial and whose professional philosophy challenges established scientific norms.

The Interplay of History, Power, and Trust

The combination of Kennedy’s personal controversies, his public health authority, and his influence on higher education presents a complex portrait of power, legacy, and trust. Allegations from Mary Richardson Kennedy and Eliza Cooney, along with the animal cruelty claims, raise questions about judgment, ethics, and personal responsibility. Now, those questions carry weight far beyond private circles—they intersect with national public health, scientific research, and the education of future professionals.

The public often sees only the polished exterior: speeches, causes, charisma. In Kennedy’s case, the hidden world includes tragic suicide, allegations of sexual misconduct, and disturbing claims regarding animals. These shadows, now coupled with sweeping policy authority and influence over universities, underscore the importance of scrutinizing both character and action. Leadership in public health and science funding is not solely about vision or ambition—it requires judgment, transparency, and accountability.

What Kennedy does next will not just define his legacy; it will shape the health, safety, and education of the country he now serves. For advocates of transparency, survivors of abuse, academic researchers, and public health professionals, watching closely is not optional—it is a civic imperative.

---

Sources

Vanity Fair. “RFK Jr.’s Family Doesn’t Want Him to Run. Even They May Not Know His Darkest Secrets.” 2024. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/robert-kennedy-jr-shocking-history

New York Post. “Mary Kennedy Accuses Ex-Husband RFK Jr. of Being 'Sexual Deviant' and 'Gaslighting' from Beyond the Grave.” 2025. https://nypost.com/2025/01/29/us-news/rfk-jrs-late-wife-accused-him-of-being-sexual-deviant-addict/

Reuters. “Woman Who Accused RFK Jr. of Sexual Assault Says He Apologized by Text.” 2024. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/woman-who-accused-rfk-jr-sexual-assault-says-he-apologized-by-text-2024-07-12/

Forbes. “RFK Jr. Calls Report Alleging He Sexually Assaulted His Children’s Nanny and Ate a Dog ‘A Lot of Garbage.’” 2024. https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/07/03/rfk-jr-calls-report-alleging-he-sexually-assaulted-his-childrens-nanny-and-ate-a-dog-a-lot-of-garbage/

WRAL. “RFK Jr. Denies Eating a Dog While Sidestepping Sexual Assault Allegations in Vanity Fair Article.” 2024. https://www.wral.com/story/rfk-jr-denies-eating-a-dog-while-sidestepping-sexual-assault-allegations-in-vanity-fair-article/21508133/

AP News. “RFK Jr. Made Promises About Vaccines. Here's What He's Done as Health Secretary.” 2025. https://apnews.com/article/d1ad570053583d953f15ec3e566e426f

Reuters. “Kennedy Proposes Ending Public Comment on HHS Decisions.” 2025. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/kennedy-proposes-ending-public-comment-hhs-decisions-2025-02-28/

Time. “What to Know About RFK Jr. Removing All Experts From CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee.” 2025. https://time.com/7292553/rfk-jr-removes-cdc-vaccine-committee-experts/

HHS.gov. “Make America Healthy Again Commission Launch.” 2025. https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/eo-maha.html

Extending Gainful Employment to All Institutions—Without Diluting Its Urgent Purpose

The debate over Gainful Employment (GE) regulations is once again heating up, and as usual, the loudest noise doesn’t come from the students who have been harmed, but from the institutions and lobbyists who fear accountability. The GE rule—originally crafted to curb abuses in the for-profit sector—evaluates whether programs leave their students with earnings high enough to reasonably repay the loans pushed onto them. It is, at its core, a consumer-protection regulation intended to protect the people higher education is supposed to serve.

A growing chorus now argues that Gainful Employment should apply to all types of schools, not just vocational programs and for-profit institutions. In principle, that argument is not wrong. Accountability should not be selective. Tuition-driven public universities, prestige-obsessed private nonprofits, elite medical centers with shadowy revenue streams, religious institutions, and wealthy flagships all participate in federal student aid programs. They all receive taxpayer money. They all should have to answer the question: Do your students earn enough to justify the debt you load onto them?

But here is where the trap lies. Expanding GE to all institutions should not become a tactic to delay, dilute, or derail Gainful Employment’s implementation. Too often, calls for “fairness” mask efforts by industry groups and establishment-aligned lobbyists to sidestep regulation altogether. The for-profit sector has used this move for more than a decade. When faced with sanctions after years of deceptive recruiting, falsified job-placement rates, and sky-high default rates, the response was always: “Why us? If GE is good policy, make everyone do it.” It is a clever pivot—not toward accountability, but away from it.

The Department of Education has long understood where the worst abuses lie. Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, Education Management Corporation, Career Education Corporation, and dozens more left hundreds of thousands of borrowers financially ruined. Many of these systems were sustained by federal aid despite evidence of fraud; many operated with political cover provided by well-paid lobbyists and deregulation-friendly lawmakers. GE was designed to stop the bleeding—to prevent an industry already steeped in predation from reinventing itself yet again.

Extending GE to all institutions is a worthy goal, but the immediate necessity is to enforce the rule where the risks are greatest. The fact that certain nonprofit and public institutions also produce poor outcomes does not negate the catastrophic harm of the for-profit sector. It simply means that any expansion of GE must follow, not precede, robust implementation.

Moreover, GE should be understood in the broader context of how the higher education finance system evolved. For decades, policymakers outsourced accountability to market forces—encouraging tuition hikes, aggressive lending through the FFEL program, and eventually the widespread securitization of student debt. When cracks began to show in the 1990s and 2000s, the establishment response was not structural reform but technical tinkering. GE was one of the first serious attempts to measure whether federally funded education delivered an actual public benefit. That is precisely why it has been so aggressively contested.

And the truth is, higher education’s accountability debate has always been a history of delay. Institutions insist they need “more data,” “more nuance,” “more consultation,” or “more time,” even as predatory practices continue to metastasize. Expanding GE is necessary. But using expansion as a pretext to stall action only reinforces a system where institutions externalize risk and students internalize debt.

What students and taxpayers deserve today is twofold:
First, a strong GE rule applied immediately to the programs with the highest risk of abuse.
Second, a parallel policy process—transparent, public, and insulated from institutional lobbying—to develop an expansion of GE-style metrics across all schools.

This is not an either-or choice. It is a matter of sequencing and political honesty.

If higher education leaders want GE applied to everyone, they should welcome its implementation in the sectors with the longest record of fraud. If lawmakers want accountability to be universal, they should commit to expanding the regulation—after the current version is enforced, not instead of it. And if critics want fairness, they should start by acknowledging the vast inequities that made GE necessary in the first place.

We cannot pretend that all institutions pose equal risk. But neither can we pretend that only one sector deserves scrutiny. The student debt crisis—forty years in the making—demands real enforcement today and a broader structural fix tomorrow.

Anything less is not reform. It is evasion.

Sources
U.S. Department of Education, Gainful Employment Rulemaking Documentation
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges
Ben Miller, “Asleep at the Switch: How the Department of Education Failed to Police the For-Profit College Industry,” Center for American Progress
Jordan Matsudaira, research on postsecondary accountability metrics
The Century Foundation, reports on proprietary higher education and oversight failures

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.

---

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.

PXED Throws US Department of Education Under the Bus Regarding Enrollment Fraud

[Editor's note: The Higher Education Inquirer has requested all Department of Education correspondence related to "unusual" or "suspicious" enrollment regarding the University of Phoenix.]   

Phoenix Education Partners (PXED), parent company of the University of Phoenix, used its latest earnings call to advance a familiar narrative: when things go wrong, blame the U.S. Department of Education. This time, CEO Chris Lynne positioned ED as the primary culprit behind the suspicious-enrollment surge that distorted PXED’s numbers over the past year.

The exchange began when Goldman Sachs analyst George Tong asked the question PXED tried to sidestep throughout its IPO process: How much of PXED’s slowing FY2026 enrollment growth is due to fraud controls, and how much of it is due to friction created for legitimate students? And, crucially, what prevents these distortions from resurfacing in the next cycle?

Lynne offered no numbers. Instead, he pivoted to a sweeping explanation of PXED’s “advanced algorithms” and internal control systems—systems so forceful that they immediately block applicants once certain thresholds are hit, even when PXED cannot determine whether they’ve flagged a real student or a bad actor.

But once the CEO finished describing these internal measures, he returned to the real point he wanted to deliver to Wall Street: this is the Department of Education’s fault, not PXED’s.

According to Lynne, the “root” cause was a breakdown in ED’s identity-verification controls tied to the troubled rollout of the new FAFSA. The Department “publicly acknowledged” the failure, Lynne said, and PXED executives met with ED in September to confirm that the government finally has “a good handle on this.” In Lynne’s telling, PXED is the responsible party cleaning up a federal mess.

What this framing ignores is everything that came before. PXED and its predecessor, the University of Phoenix, have long histories of enrollment-integrity problems that predate the FAFSA meltdown by more than a decade. When Lynne says his algorithms “cleaned up” the funnel after being moved to the top of the application process, what he really means is that PXED used its own filters—its own black-box controls—to decide which students were worth staff time and which were not.

And PXED quietly admitted the cost. The verification loops and algorithmic filters caught many real students, blocking or delaying their enrollment and layering additional obstacles onto people who already face the steepest barriers in higher education. Lynne dismissed this as mere “friction”—a small price to pay for cleaner numbers.

But the larger problem is structural. For-profit systems built on volume rely on conversions, throughput, and funnel efficiency. When that model is threatened, the instinct is not to repair student-facing systems—it's to blame the government, tighten internal controls, and preserve the revenue pipeline. PXED’s decision to throw ED under the bus fits that pattern exactly.

The real story isn’t that the Department of Education made serious mistakes in rolling out the new FAFSA—mistakes it has acknowledged. The real story is how quickly companies like PXED use those failures as a shield, deflecting accountability for their own long-standing recruitment practices and quietly punishing the very students they claim to serve.