The Mis-education of Global Elites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Academic Sources

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

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.

A Moral Imperative: Universities Should Release All Epstein-Related Files

Universities have a responsibility to act. Harvard, MIT, and other elite institutions that accepted donations from Jeffrey Epstein — even after his 2008 conviction — must release all files related to his gifts, internal reviews, communications, and institutional interactions. Transparency is not optional; it is the first step in holding powerful actors accountable and restoring public trust. By disclosing these materials, universities can confront the full extent of institutional complicity and set a precedent for ethical leadership.

The Epstein scandal revealed more than the crimes of a single man. It exposed networks of wealth, influence, and institutional failure that allowed abuse to flourish. Epstein’s financial power bought him credibility, and universities, in return, offered him prestige, office space, and public recognition. This relationship was not incidental; it reflected structural norms that protect the privileged and silence victims. By releasing their files, universities can transform secrecy into accountability, turning knowledge and transparency into a powerful nonviolent tool for justice.

Scholarship plays a critical role in this process. Academics documenting Epstein’s networks, the decisions of institutional leaders, and systemic failures provide the evidence necessary to guide meaningful reform. Higher Education Inquirer’s reporting connects Epstein to influential figures such as Alan Dershowitz and Larry Summers, showing how institutional authority was leveraged to shield elite actors. Knowledge, in this context, functions as a form of nonviolent power — a way to demand change grounded in facts rather than force.

Educational institutions can also shape culture through ethical education. By integrating discussions of institutional complicity, philanthropy, and moral responsibility into curricula, universities prepare future leaders to recognize abuses of power and resist systems that protect the privileged. This is not simply about preventing future abuse; it is about cultivating leaders attuned to ethics, justice, and accountability across all sectors of society.

Nonviolent pressure is amplified when students, faculty, and alumni mobilize to demand transparency. Public forums, petitions, and advocacy campaigns compel boards and administrators to act. Universities cannot ignore the moral and reputational stakes when their communities insist on disclosure. Truth-and-reconciliation initiatives, such as survivor-led review boards, offer an additional path. These bodies confront past abuses, acknowledge harm, and recommend systemic reforms, creating space for healing while promoting institutional integrity.

Public engagement strengthens these efforts further. Independent media outlets and academic reporting extend the university’s moral authority into society, informing public debate and influencing policy. By releasing all Epstein-related files, universities participate directly in this process, setting a standard for transparency, accountability, and ethical leadership.

The Epstein revelations, as framed by Higher Education Inquirer, offer a historic opportunity. By releasing all relevant files, supporting rigorous research, fostering ethical education, and empowering communities to hold institutions accountable, higher education can wield its moral authority as a nonviolent force for justice. Universities reclaim public trust, demonstrate integrity, and show that knowledge and transparency remain among the most powerful tools for transformative social change.

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Sources

• Higher Education Inquirer. “Elite Higher Education and the Epstein Files.” July 14, 2025. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/07/elite-higher-education-and-epstein-files.html

• Higher Education Inquirer. “Release All the Epstein Files.” July 24, 2025. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/07/release-all-epstein-files.html

• Higher Education Inquirer. “Epstein, Dershowitz, Summers, and the Long Arc of Elite Impunity.” Nov 16, 2025. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/11/epstein-dershowitz-summers-and-long-arc.html

• Higher Education Inquirer. “The Dirty World of Billionaire Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein: Profits Over People.” Aug 16, 2025. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/08/the-dirty-world-of-billionaire-leon.html

• Higher Education Inquirer. “Are the Epstein Files the Watergate of Our Time?” July 23, 2025. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/07/are-the-epstein-files-the-watergate-of-our-time.html

Phoenix Education Partners, FAFSA Fraud, and the Familiar Dance of Blame

When Phoenix Education Partners (PXED) CEO Chris Lynne publicly blamed the U.S. Department of Education for missing fraud in FAFSA applications—fraud that allowed the University of Phoenix to enroll individuals engaged in financial-aid misconduct—he likely hoped to redirect scrutiny away from his own shop. Instead, the maneuver sent up a flare. For many observers of the for-profit college sector, it felt like the return of a well-worn tactic: deflect, distract, and deny responsibility until the heat dies down.

The pivot toward blaming the Department of Education does not merely look defensive; it echoes a pattern that helped bring down an entire generation of predatory schools. And it raises a simple question: why is PXED responding like institutions that have something to hide?


The Old Script, Updated

The University of Phoenix, under PXED’s ownership, carries not just a long memory of investigations and settlements but a structural DNA shaped by years of aggressive enrollment management, marketing overreach, and high-pressure tactics. When the industry was confronted with evidence of systemic abuses—lying about job placement, enrolling ineligible students, manipulating financial-aid rules—the typical industry defense was to claim that problems were caused by bad actors, by misinterpreted regulations, or by a sluggish and incompetent Department of Education.

Those excuses were not convincing then, and they ring even more hollow now.

If individuals involved in financial-aid fraud managed to slip into the system, an institution with PXED’s history should be the first to strengthen internal controls, not pass the buck. Schools are required under federal law to verify eligibility, prevent fraud, and monitor suspicious patterns. Pretending that ED is solely responsible ignores the compliance structure PXED is obligated—by statute—to maintain.

Why Blame-Shifting Looks So Suspicious

Instead of demonstrating transparency or releasing information about internal controls that failed, PXED’s leadership has opted for a public relations gambit: blame the regulator. This raises several concerns.

First, shifting responsibility before releasing evidence suggests that PXED may be more focused on reputational management than on institutional accountability. If the organization’s processes were sound, those facts would speak louder—and more credibly—than an accusatory press statement.

Second, the posture is déjà vu for people who have tracked the sector for decades. Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, Education Management Corp., and Career Education Corporation all blamed ED at various stages of their collapses. In each case, deflection became part of the pattern that preceded deeper revelations of systemic abuse.

When PXED’s CEO adopts similar rhetoric, observers reasonably wonder whether history is repeating itself—again.

Finally, PXED’s argument undermines trust at a moment when the University of Phoenix is already under skepticism from accreditors, policymakers, student-borrower advocates, and the public. Instead of strengthening compliance, PXED’s messaging signals defensiveness. Institutions with nothing to hide usually take a different approach.

The Structural Issues PXED Doesn’t Want to Discuss

PXED acquired the University of Phoenix with promises of modernization, stabilization, and responsible stewardship. But beneath the marketing, core challenges remain:

A business model dependent on federal aid. The more a school relies on federal dollars, the stronger its responsibility to prevent fraud—not the weaker.

A compliance culture shaped by profit pressure. For-profit education has repeatedly shown how financial incentives can distort admissions and oversight.

A credibility deficit. PXED took over an institution known internationally for deceptive advertising and financial-aid abuses. Blaming ED only magnifies the perception that nothing has fundamentally changed.

A fragile regulatory environment. With oversight tightening and student-protection rules returning, PXED cannot afford to gesture toward the old for-profit playbook. Doing so suggests they are trying to manage optics instead of outcomes.

What Accountability Would Look Like

If PXED wanted to demonstrate leadership rather than defensiveness, a different response was available:

• Conduct and publish a full internal review of financial-aid intake processes
• Outline steps to prevent enrollment of fraudulent actors
• Acknowledge institutional lapses—and explain how they occurred
• Invite independent audits rather than blaming federal partners
• Demonstrate an understanding of fiduciary obligations to students and taxpayers

This is the standard expected of Title IV institutions. It is also the standard PXED insists they meet.

A Familiar Pattern at a Familiar Institution

Every moment of pressure reveals something about institutional culture. PXED’s choice to immediately fault the Department of Education—without presenting evidence of its own vigilance—suggests that the company may still be operating according to the old Phoenix playbook: when in doubt, blame someone else.

But in 2025, the public, regulators, and students have seen this movie before. And they know how it ends.

Sources
U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Handbook
Senate HELP Committee, For-Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success
Federal Trade Commission, University of Phoenix Settlement Documents
U.S. Department of Education, Program Review and Compliance Requirements
Higher Education Inquirer archives

Same Predators, New Logo: PXED — A $22 Billion Student‑Debt Gamble Investors Should Beware

Warning to Investors: Phoenix Education Partners (PXED) may present itself as a cutting‑edge solution in career-focused higher education, but it’s built on the same extractive infrastructure that powered the University of Phoenix. With nearly a million students still owing an estimated $22 billion in federal loans, backing PXED isn’t just a financial bet — it’s a moral and reputational risk.

PXED’s leadership includes powerful private-equity players: Martin H. Nesbitt (Co‑CEO of Vistria, PXED trustee, and friend of Barak Obama), Adnan Nisar (Vistria), and Theodore Kwon and Itai Wallach (Apollo Global Management). Also in the mix is Chris Lynne, PXED’s president and a former Phoenix CFO intimately familiar with UOP’s controversial enrollment and marketing strategies. These are not educational reformers — they are dealmakers aiming to extract value from a student-debt pipeline.

[Image: Power Player Marty Nesbitt]

Higher Education Inquirer’s College Meltdown Index highlights how PXED fits into a broader financialization of higher education. Rather than reforming the University of Phoenix, its backers have resurrected it under a new brand — one that continues to enroll vulnerable adult learners, harvest federal aid, and operate with considerably less public oversight. 

Whistleblowers previously documented that Phoenix pressured recruitment staff to falsify student credentials, enrolling people who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for federal aid. Courses were allegedly kept deliberately easy — not to teach, but to keep students “active” enough to trigger aid disbursements. Internal marketing also exaggerated job prospects and corporate partnerships (e.g., with Microsoft and AT&T) to entice students. 

PXED may lean on a three‑year default rate (often cited around 12–13%), but that number is deeply misleading. Many UOP students stay stuck in deferment, forbearance, or income-driven repayment, masking the real long-term risk of non-payment. This is not just a short-term liability — it’s a potentially massive, multiyear financial exposure for PXED’s backers.

There was a significant FTC settlement that canceled $141 million in student debt and refunded $50 million to some students. But the scale of harm far exceeds that payout. Untold numbers of borrowers still have unresolved Borrower Defense claims, and the reputational risk remains profound.

Beyond financial concerns, there’s a major ethical dimension. HEI’s Divestment from Predatory Education argument makes a compelling case that investing in companies like PXED — or in loan servicers that profit from student debt — is not just risky, but morally indefensible. According to HEI, institutional investors (including university endowments, pension funds, and foundations) are complicit in a system that monetizes students’ aspirations and perpetuates financial harm. 

For investors, the message is clear: Phoenix is not merely an education play — it’s a high-stakes, ethically fraught extraction machine built on a legacy of indebtedness and regulatory vulnerability.

Unless PXED commits to real transparency, independent reporting on student outcomes, and accountability mechanisms — including reparations or debt relief — it should be approached not as a social-growth story, but as a dangerous gamble.

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Sources

• HEI. “Divestment from Predatory Education Stocks: A Moral Imperative.” Higher Education Inquirer

• HEI. “The College Meltdown Index: Profiting from the Wreckage of American Higher Education.” Higher Education Inquirer

• HEI. “What Do the University of Phoenix and Risepoint Have in Common? The Answer Is a Compelling Story of Greed and Politics.” Higher Education Inquirer

• HEI. “University of Phoenix Uses ‘Sandwich Moms’ to Sell a Debt Trap.” Higher Education Inquirer

• HEI. “New Data Show Nearly a Million University of Phoenix Debtors Owe $21.6 Billion.” Higher Education

Are Elite Neoliberals and Trump Singing from the Same Sheet of Music?

The silence of America’s elite is deafening. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Yale professor and corporate leadership expert, does not hesitate to call it out. In a recent email, he warned that the nation’s corporate, academic, and religious leaders—once the backbone of moral and civic accountability—are now “smugly, safely, silently on the sidelines,” while authoritarian forces surge.

“Nope,” Sonnenfeld wrote, “but it’s high time for the neo whiners to get off their lazy, cowardly butts and follow the courageous path of activists across sectors and fields from the 1960s and 1970s. It took nine years to get the No Kings rallies going. Shameful.”

He recalls an era when activism cut across sectors: interfaith clergy, college presidents—from elite universities to small faith-based institutions and HBCUs—trade union leaders, professional associations, environmentalists, and human rights advocates all marched together. Blue state treasurers and attorneys general held corporations accountable; red state officials sometimes applied pressure from the opposite side. CEOs, Sonnenfeld reminds us, are mostly “hired hands, stewards of other people’s money” who respond to engaged stakeholders. Without pressure, they retreat into inaction.

Today, the chorus of accountability is eerily silent. Clergy barely speak out. University presidents remain cautious. Activists blog while the nation teeters. Sonnenfeld’s indictment is clear: where once there was collective courage, there is now passivity—an effective alignment with the very forces undermining democracy.

In practical terms, elite inaction has consequences. Trump and his allies wield influence not only through electoral politics but by exploiting institutional inertia. By failing to mobilize, elites—through default inaction—allow a political agenda that often mirrors their own neoliberal priorities to advance unchecked: deregulation, tax favoritism, corporate consolidation, and a shrinking social safety net.

Sonnenfeld’s challenge is urgent: Will today’s corporate boards, clergy, and academic leaders rise to the occasion, reclaim the moral authority they once wielded, and demand accountability from those they employ and fund? Or will the next generation of Americans grow up seeing democracy as a performance, not a lived responsibility?

The 1960s and 1970s were not perfect, but they demonstrated what cross-sectoral solidarity could achieve. Today, silence is complicity. In a nation at moral and political crossroads, elites cannot afford to play it safe. History is watching—and so is the rest of the world.

Defenders of the Higher Ed Business: How Lawyers Shield a Broken Industry

In the long decline of American higher education, a certain class of professionals has quietly prospered—lawyers who specialize in defending institutions from the consequences of their own behavior. These attorneys rarely appear in public debates over student debt, predatory recruitment, or collapsing regional colleges. Yet their fingerprints are everywhere: in courtroom strategies designed to run out the clock, in motions that narrow the rights of borrowers, in settlement agreements that mask wrongdoing without forcing structural reform. They are the legal custodians of an industry that has spent decades avoiding accountability.

These lawyers often frame their role as neutral, simply providing representation to clients who need it. But the nature of the representation matters. When institutions mislead students, inflate job-placement claims, push them into unaffordable debt, or fire whistleblowers who object to unethical practices, these firms defend the institution—not the student, not the truth, and certainly not the public interest. Litigation summaries and public communications frequently present a parallel universe in which colleges are the victims, regulators are overreaching meddlers, and students who seek restitution are opportunists or pawns of political forces.

The legal work is highly lucrative. In many cases, struggling institutions spend more on their attorneys than they do on direct student support. Colleges on the brink of closure still find six-figure retainers to fight state attorney general investigations or borrower defense claims. Public institutions use taxpayer dollars to shield themselves from transparency, all while students—particularly first-generation, low-income, and working-class students—absorb the losses. Attorneys in this sector are acutely aware of the harms their clients may have caused, yet their work consistently prioritizes institutional preservation over student restitution.

The history of this defense strategy is well documented. In 2011, federal courts began seeing cases from former students challenging institutions for misleading claims, untransferable credits, and failure to provide promised training. Courts often compelled arbitration, effectively removing class action rights and leaving individual students to pursue costly and complex proceedings alone. This pattern set a precedent: institutional defense relied on procedural tools rather than addressing substantive misconduct. Between 2012 and 2013, state supreme courts upheld arbitration clauses that stripped students of collective redress, signaling to institutions that strategic legal defenses could block accountability. Students’ claims of misrepresentation, fraud, and breaches of enrollment agreements were repeatedly forced into private arbitration. The courts emphasized procedural enforcement over consideration of the underlying harms, allowing institutions to continue operating without public scrutiny.

From 2015 to 2018, the Department of Education’s Inspector General documented widespread mismanagement of federal Title IV funds, showing that hundreds of millions in federal loans were issued to students at institutions that were later found to have misrepresented outcomes or violated federal regulations. Lawsuits brought by former students during this period, including allegations under the False Claims Act, were often dismissed or compelled to arbitration. Institutions were shielded, while borrowers were left with debt and limited recourse.

In 2018 and 2019, state attorneys general filed enforcement actions against multiple institutions for fraudulent recruitment practices and misrepresentation of accreditation status. In almost every case, institutions relied on their legal teams to secure procedural victories: dismissal of class action claims, enforcement of arbitration clauses, and delays in settlements. While regulators attempted to intervene, the structural power of corporate legal defense delayed, diluted, or obscured accountability. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2021, students sued institutions for failure to provide adequate online instruction and for abrupt changes in course delivery. Defense attorneys successfully argued that enrollment agreements allowed these operational changes, resulting in widespread dismissal of student claims. Again, institutional defense won the day while students absorbed the financial and educational consequences.

From 2022 to 2025, the Borrower Defense to Repayment program and the SAVE Plan promised relief for students harmed by mismanaged institutions. Yet litigation and regulatory challenges have slowed implementation. Institutions and their attorneys have repeatedly used procedural maneuvers to contest forgiveness, compel arbitration, or delay repayments, leaving thousands of students in limbo while debt accumulates. Throughout this period, legal strategy has consistently prioritized institutional survival over student restitution. Arbitration clauses, procedural dismissals, and regulatory delay have allowed colleges and universities to maintain access to federal funds, complete mergers, or restructure under bankruptcy protection, all while leaving harmed students with debt, disrupted education, and minimal legal recourse.

These attorneys also help shape the narratives consumed by policymakers, journalists, and college trustees. Public-facing summaries often downplay institutional misconduct and amplify court decisions that limit student rights. They rarely acknowledge the emotional and financial devastation suffered by borrowers or the systemic risks created when institutions know their lawyers can absorb most of the blow. Instead, they champion a legal environment that treats higher education primarily as a business subject to claims risk, not as a public trust.

Justice, in this ecosystem, becomes a matter of resources. Students and former employees face a wall of corporate legal expertise, while institutions with long records of abuse continue to operate behind settlements and sealed agreements. Attorneys who could use their considerable skills to protect the most vulnerable instead use them to reinforce a system that extracts value from students and leaves them to fend for themselves once the promises fall apart.

The Higher Education Inquirer has long documented the College Meltdown: the closures, the debt, the failed oversight, and the human cost. But the meltdown is not only a story about administrators, investors, or federal agencies. It is also a story about the lawyers who defend the indefensible and who help maintain a higher education marketplace where accountability is optional and harm is routine. They may sleep well, but only because the consequences of their work are borne by others.

The question is not how they sleep at night. The question is how many more students will lose before the legal strategies that protect institutions are no longer enough to protect the industry itself.

Sources:

U.S. Department of Education, Borrower Defense to Repayment decision data, 2022–2025

Government Accountability Office (GAO), “For-Profit Colleges: Student Outcomes and Federal Oversight,” 2021

Department of Education Office of Federal Student Aid, Borrower Defense decisions, 2020–2025

State Attorneys General filings and enforcement actions against higher education institutions, 2018–2023

U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General, audits and reports on Title IV program compliance, 2015–2022

GAO report on arbitration clauses in for-profit colleges, 2018

How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis—and Why HUD’s New Cuts Will Make It Worse

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has quietly announced one of the most drastic federal rollbacks in homelessness policy in decades: a massive cut to permanent housing under the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, with more than half of its 2026 funding diverted to transitional housing and compliance-based services. HUD’s own internal estimates warn that up to 170,000 people could lose housing as a result of the shift. For millions of Americans, especially those on the margins, this is not a policy adjustment; it is the beginning of a humanitarian disaster.

To understand how we arrived here, it is not enough to point at the Trump administration, the ideological crusade against “Housing First,” or the White House Faith Office now shaping federal grantmaking. One must also examine the educated neoliberals who built and normalized the system that made this possible.

HUD’s policy change overturns decades of federal commitment to permanent supportive housing, an evidence-backed model that dramatically reduces chronic homelessness. The new Notice of Funding Opportunity caps permanent housing at just 30 percent of CoC dollars, down from 87 percent in prior years, while the remainder is funneled toward transitional housing, work or service requirements, mandatory treatment, and faith-based compliance programs. The total funding for 2026 is roughly $3.9 billion across 7,000 grants. That amount, spread across hundreds of thousands of people experiencing homelessness, is barely sufficient to provide minimal assistance, let alone stable housing or the comprehensive services this population needs. One-third of existing programs will run out of funds before the new awards are issued in May, leaving vulnerable individuals exposed to eviction during the harshest months of winter. Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness and a former HUD official, described the rollout as deeply irresponsible, warning that the administration is setting communities up for failure.

For decades, U.S. policy has been shaped not just by conservatives but also by a sprawling class of highly educated managers: MBAs, MPPs, JDs, think-tank fellows, foundation executives, nonprofit administrators, and “innovation” consultants. They came from America’s elite universities, fluent in market logic, managerialism, and austerity politics. They preached efficiency, accountability, metrics, and self-sufficiency. Many also personally accumulated wealth, often owning multiple homes, benefiting from investment income, and exploiting loopholes to minimize or avoid taxes. Meanwhile, the programs they manage shrink support for the poor and vulnerable.

Through their influence, housing became a program, not a public good. Public housing construction largely disappeared, replaced by a grant-driven, nonprofit marketplace controlled by elite professionals. Even the funding allocated for CoC programs, though nominally in the billions, is deliberately minimal. This scarcity forces competition, instability, and suffering among poor people. Nonprofit executives, most of whom depend on federal contracts and foundation dollars, rarely challenge the economic and political structures that produce homelessness. Accountability rhetoric replaced structural change, reframing homelessness as an issue of individual behavior rather than a systemic failure. The academy normalized the idea that poor people should suffer, teaching a generation of managers to prioritize markets, metrics, and “innovation” over human need. This bipartisan, university-trained professional class laid the foundation for the HUD cuts now threatening hundreds of thousands of lives.

HUD argues that the new model “restores accountability” and reduces the purported waste of Housing First, but decades of research contradict that claim. Permanent supportive housing reduces chronic homelessness, lowers emergency and policing costs, stabilizes people with disabilities, and is cheaper than institutionalization or shelters. Transitional housing with mandatory compliance, on the other hand, repeatedly pushes people back to the streets, disproportionately harms people with disabilities, increases mortality, inflates administrative costs, and creates churn rather than stability. The policy is not a mistake; it reflects the calculated priorities of an elite managerial class whose worldview demands austerity for the poor while allowing them to flourish materially.

The response in Washington has been striking. Forty-two Senate Democrats warned HUD that the shift violates the McKinney-Vento Act, undermines local decision-making, and rejects decades of federally funded research. Even twenty House Republicans urged careful implementation to avoid destabilizing services for seniors and disabled people. Yet decades of neoliberal policymaking—funded and legitimized by universities, foundations, and think tanks—have already created a system in which poverty and suffering are baked into federal policy. This latest HUD action simply codifies that worldview.

The crisis unfolding now is not just the product of Trump’s ideological war on Housing First. It is the logical endpoint of decades of privatization, the erosion of public housing, elite consensus around austerity, credentialed managerialism, the nonprofit-industrial complex, the foundation-university revolving door, and the belief—deeply embedded in higher education—that markets and metrics should govern everything. Many of these policymakers and nonprofit executives own multiple homes, refuse to pay taxes, and structure federal policy to ensure the poor remain dependent, unstable, and suffering. The people most directly harmed are those with the least political power: disabled people, elderly tenants, veterans, people with serious mental illness, women fleeing violence, and families trying to survive an economy that no longer works for them. Behind them stands a class of educated neoliberals who built the systems that made this outcome possible, often congratulating themselves for “innovation” while allowing misery to proliferate. This is not failure. This is design.

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Sources:

• Politico, “HUD to Cut Permanent Housing Funding for Homeless Programs,” 2025.

• National Alliance to End Homelessness, internal HUD funding documents, 2025.

• Ann Oliva, National Alliance to End Homelessness, statements to POLITICO, 2025.

• McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, 1987.

• HUD Notice of Funding Opportunity, 2026 Continuum of Care Program.

• Executive Order: “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” White House, 2025.

Neoliberalism and the Global College Meltdown

Over the past four decades, neoliberalism has reshaped higher education into a market-driven enterprise, producing what can only be described as a global College Meltdown. Once envisioned as a public good—a tool for civic empowerment, social mobility, and national progress—higher education in the United States, the United Kingdom, and China has been transformed into a competitive market system defined by privatization, debt, and disillusionment.

The United States: From Public Good to Profit Engine

Nowhere has neoliberal ideology had a more devastating effect on higher education than in the United States. Beginning in the 1980s, with the Reagan administration’s cuts to federal grants and the expansion of student loans, higher education funding shifted from public investment to individual burden. Universities adopted corporate governance models, hired armies of administrators, and marketed education as a private commodity promising personal enrichment rather than collective advancement.

The results are visible everywhere: tuition inflation, student debt exceeding $1.7 trillion, and the proliferation of predatory for-profit colleges. Elite universities transformed into financial behemoths, hoarding endowments while relying on contingent faculty. Meanwhile, working-class and minority students were lured into debt traps by institutions that promised upward mobility but delivered unemployment and despair.

The U.S. College Meltdown—a term that describes the system’s moral and financial collapse—is a direct consequence of neoliberal policies: deregulation, privatization, and austerity disguised as efficiency. The profit motive replaced the public mission, and the casualties include students, adjuncts, and the ideal of education as a democratic right.

The United Kingdom: Marketization and Managerialism

The United Kingdom followed a similar trajectory under Margaret Thatcher and her successors. The introduction of tuition fees in 1998 and their tripling in 2012 marked the formal triumph of neoliberal logic over public investment. British universities became quasi-corporate entities, obsessed with league tables, branding, and global rankings.

The result has been mounting student debt, declining staff morale, and a hollowing out of intellectual life. Faculty strikes over pensions and pay disparities underscore a deeper crisis of purpose. Universities now function as rent-seeking landlords—building luxury dorms for international students while cutting humanities departments. The logic of “student-as-customer” has reduced education to a transaction, and accountability has been redefined to mean profit margin rather than social contribution.

The UK’s College Meltdown mirrors that of the U.S.—a story of financialization, precarious labor, and the erosion of public trust.

China: Neoliberalism with Authoritarian Characteristics

At first glance, China seems to defy the Western College Meltdown. Its universities have expanded rapidly, producing millions of graduates and investing heavily in research. But beneath this apparent success lies a deeply neoliberal structure embedded in an authoritarian framework.

Since the 1990s, China’s higher education system has embraced competition, rankings, and market incentives. Universities compete for prestige and funding; families invest heavily in private tutoring and overseas degrees; and graduates face a saturated labor market. The result is mounting anxiety and unemployment among young people—known online as the “lying flat” generation, disillusioned with promises of meritocratic success.

The Chinese model fuses state control with neoliberal marketization. Education serves as both an instrument of national power and a mechanism of social stratification. In this sense, China’s version of the College Meltdown reflects a global truth: the commodification of education leads to alienation, regardless of political system.

A Global System in Crisis

Whether in Washington, London, or Beijing, the pattern is strikingly similar. Neoliberalism treats education as an investment in human capital, reducing learning to a financial calculation. Universities compete like corporations; students borrow like consumers; and knowledge becomes a tool of capital accumulation rather than liberation.

This convergence of economic and ideological forces has created an unsustainable higher education bubble—overpriced, overcredentialized, and underdelivering. Across continents, graduates face debt, underemployment, and despair, while universities chase rankings and revenue streams instead of justice and truth.

Toward a Post-Neoliberal Education

Reversing the College Meltdown requires more than reform; it demands a new philosophy. Public universities must reclaim their civic mission. Education must once again be understood as a human right, not a private investment. Debt forgiveness, reinvestment in teaching, and democratic governance are essential first steps.

Neoliberalism’s greatest illusion was that markets could produce wisdom. The College Meltdown proves the opposite: when education serves profit instead of people, it consumes itself from within.

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Sources:

• Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos (2015)

• David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005)

• Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed (2017)

• The Higher Education Inquirer archives on the U.S. College Meltdown

• BBC, “University staff strikes and student debt crisis,” 2024

• Caixin, “China’s youth unemployment and education anxiety,” 2023

Epstein, Dershowitz, Summers, and the Long Arc of Elite Impunity

For many observers, Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz, and Larry Summers appear as separate figures orbiting the world of elite academia, finance, and politics. But together—and through the long lens of history—they represent something far more revealing: the modern expression of a centuries-old system in which elite institutions protect powerful men while sacrificing the vulnerable.

The Epstein-Dershowitz-Summers triangle is not a scandal of individuals gone astray. It is the predictable result of structures that make such abuses almost inevitable.

The Modern Version of an Old System

Jeffrey Epstein built his influence not through scholarship or scientific discovery—he had no advanced degrees—but by inserting himself into the financial bloodstream of the Ivy League. Harvard and MIT accepted his money, his introductions, and his promises of access to ultra-wealthy networks. Epstein did not need credibility; he purchased it.

Larry Summers, as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006, continued to engage with Epstein after the financier’s first arrest and plea deal. Summers’ administration accepted substantial Epstein donations, including funds channeled into the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. Summers and his wife dined at Epstein’s Manhattan home. After leaving Harvard, Summers stayed in touch with Epstein even as the financier’s abuses became increasingly public. Summers used the same revolving door that has long connected elite universities, Wall Street, and presidential administrations—moving freely and comfortably across all three.

Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law Professor and Epstein’s close associate and legal strategist, exemplifies another pillar of this system: elite legal protection. Dershowitz defended Epstein vigorously, attacked survivors publicly, and remains embroiled in litigation connected to the case. Whether one believes Dershowitz’s claims of innocence is secondary to the structural fact: elite institutions reliably shield their own.

Together, Epstein offered money and connections; Summers offered institutional prestige and political access; Dershowitz offered legal insulation. Harvard, meanwhile, offered a platform through which all three profited.

Knowledge as a Shield—Not a Light

For centuries, elite universities have served as both engines of knowledge and fortresses of power. They are not neutral institutions.

They defended slavery and eugenics, supplying “scientific” justification for racial hierarchies.
They exploited labor—from enslaved workers who built campuses to adjuncts living in poverty today.
They marginalized survivors of sexual violence while protecting benefactors and faculty.
They accepted fortunes derived from war profiteering, colonial extraction, hedge-fund predation, and private-equity devastation.

Epstein did not invent the model of the toxic patron. He merely perfected it in the neoliberal era.

A Four-Step Pattern of Elite Impunity

The scandal surrounding Epstein, Dershowitz, and Summers follows a trajectory that dates back centuries:

1. Wealth accumulation through exploitation
   From slave plantations to private equity, concentrated wealth is generated through systems that harm the many to benefit the few.

2. The purchase of academic legitimacy
   Endowed chairs, laboratories, fellowships, and advisory roles allow dubious benefactors to launder reputations through universities.

3. Legal and cultural shielding
   Elite lawyers, confidential settlements, non-disclosure agreements, and institutional silence create protective armor.

4. Silencing of survivors and critics
   Reputational attacks, threats of litigation, and internal pressure discourage transparency and accountability.

Epstein operated within this system. Dershowitz defended it. Summers benefited from it. Harvard reinforced it.

Larry Summers: An Anatomy of Power

Summers’ career illuminates the deeper structure behind the scandal. His trajectory—Harvard president, U.S. Treasury Secretary, World Bank chief economist, adviser to hedge funds, consultant to Big Tech—mirrors the seamless circulation of elite power between universities, finance, and government.

During his presidency, Harvard publicly embraced Epstein’s donations. After Epstein’s first sex-offense conviction, Summers continued to meet with him socially and professionally. Summers leveraged networks that Epstein also sought to cultivate. And even after the Epstein scandal fully broke open, Summers faced no meaningful institutional repercussions.

The message was clear: individual wrongdoing matters less than maintaining elite continuity.

Higher Education’s Structural Complicity

Elite universities were not “duped.” They were beneficiaries.

Harvard returned only a fraction of Epstein’s donations, and only after the press exposed the relationship. MIT hid Epstein’s gifts behind false donor names. Faculty traveled to his island and penthouse without demanding transparency.

Meanwhile:

Adjuncts qualify for food assistance
Students carry life-crippling debt
Administrators earn CEO-level pay
Donors dictate priorities behind closed doors

This is not hypocrisy—it is hierarchy. A system built to serve wealth does exactly that.

A Timeline Much Longer Than Epstein

To understand the present, we must zoom out:

Oxford and Cambridge accepted slave-trade wealth as institutional lifeblood.
Gilded Age robber barons endowed libraries while crushing labor movements.
Cold War intelligence agencies quietly funded research centers.
Today’s oligarchs, tech billionaires, and private-equity titans buy influence through endowments and think tanks.

The tools change. The pattern does not.

Universities help legitimate the powerful—even when those powerful figures harm the public.

Why This Still Matters

The Epstein scandal is not resolved. Court documents continue to emerge. Survivors continue to speak. Elite institutions continue to stall and deflect. Harvard still resists meaningful transparency, even as its endowment approaches national GDP levels.

The danger is not simply that another Epstein will emerge. It is that elite universities will continue to provide the conditions that make another Epstein inevitable.

What Breaking the Pattern Requires

Ending this system demands more than symbolic gestures or public-relations apologies. Real reform requires:

Radical donor transparency—with all gifts, advisory roles, and meetings disclosed
Worker and student representation on governing boards
Strong whistleblower protections and the abolition of secret NDAs
Robust public funding to reduce reliance on elite philanthropy
Independent journalism committed to exposing institutional power

Ida B. Wells, Jessica Mitford, Upton Sinclair, and other muckrakers understood what universities still deny: scandals are symptoms. The disease is structural.

Epstein was not an anomaly.
Dershowitz is not an anomaly.
Summers is not an anomaly.

They are products of a system in which universities serve power first—and truth, only if convenient.

If higher education wants to reclaim public trust, it must finally decide which side of history it is on.

Finally Learned My Limits (Heidi Weber)

[Editors note: "No Stop" Heidi Weber has been a hero of ours for several years. Her courage fighting corruption at Globe University was documented on an episode of CBS Whistleblower.]

First, I would like to thank Dahn, and all the other truth tellers who work tirelessly every day and sacrifice so much to elevate truth. Without them, any whistleblower efforts would not have half the positive impact that they do.

For years, I really struggled with the title of whistleblower. I thought if I could distance myself from it, all the resulting traumas would just disappear, and life would be “normal” again.

However, I underestimated how much a landmark whistleblower case, especially in higher education, would affect and continually haunt me. I'm glad now, that it did, because it forced me to see how much of an impact it has had on an entire for-profit sector. I learned it's ok to allow myself to feel a sense of pride. After all, it was the most painful, stressful thing I imagined I'd ever go through.

Unfortunately, life didn't get that memo and still had lessons for me about the depth of pain adversity, and struggle, in ways that I never imagined.

In the middle of the pandemic, my husband’s sudden unexpected stroke forced us into a reality we weren’t prepared for. Overnight, I became his nurse, advocate, cheerleader, and his sole rehabilitation task master, simultaneously trying to maintain and hold our home together and make ends meet.

At the same time, our once close, beautiful, adult daughters estranged from us without explanation, treating us as if we do not exist, and are of no value to them... *

All I knew, was that it resulted in leaving a pain and heartache so profound that has reshaped the way I understand love, loss, and resilience.

In the midst of these personal storms, I rediscovered a purpose in educating and helping others as an advocate. So, I added two post graduate certificates and learned how to support and even the field for families who feel powerless in a biased system financially incentivized to separate families and little accountability or oversight.

Injustice and unfairness still stir a fire in me, just as it had when I made that fateful decision to become a whistleblower, and it still inspires me to be relentless in seeking truth and fairness.

Only now, I have the unique experience and knowledge to inspire/teach others.

Currently, I've been writing curricula and developing an online training program for a Certificate as a Justice Support Advocate. It focuses on some basic foundations of civics, (no longer taught in school), finding your own resilience and purpose, the various types of advocates, incorporating it into your personal and professional life, and protecting yourself and the public at the same time.

My wish is for learners to find their own fire and realize that courage is easier found when you are fighting for what you know is true and just for everyone, no matter what that is.

I've also been doing family advocacy consulting work, as an affordable option for parents, alone or as a partner to their attorney to provide non legal support, evaluation, investigation, and provide fair, logical solutions:

1. For parents facing or concerned about unethical practices in the Child Protective Services (CPS) system to audit, teach and ensure that parents are being portrayed truthfully with reasonable realistic goals to reunite the family, if indicated.

2. In high conflict custody, providing evaluation and screening for signs of parental alienation, and support, education, and resources (to both parents) on how to navigate being a divorced family, as well as providing recommendations to the Court (if indicated) centered around the best interests of the child and importance of both parents to healthy development.

If you would like to discuss either of those services or more info on the advocacy certificate course, please contact me at nostopheidi@gmail.com. I'm shooting for February or March 2026 to have the website, and course available online.

These years have been painful, transformative, and defining, but with pain comes growth and wisdom. Life still had more lessons…. to show me there is no limit to how much I can carry and keep positively moving forward.

*Adult children from “normal” average parents have become an almost celebrated (unhealthy) trend over the last ten years especially, for many adult children who have been influenced, poisoned, or alienated against one or both parents by undertrained therapists, peers, and social media influencers, allowing avoidance of responsibility, self-discipline, or concern for others.

The College Meltdown Index: Profiting from the Wreckage of American Higher Education

“Education, once defended as a public good, now functions as a vehicle for private gain.”

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From Collapse to Contagion

The College Meltdown never truly ended—it evolved.

After a decade of spectacular for-profit implosions, the higher education sector has reconstituted itself around new instruments of profit: debt servicing, edtech speculation, and corporate “partnerships” that disguise privatization as innovation.

The College Meltdown Index—tracking a mix of education providers, servicers, and learning platforms—reveals a sector in quiet decay.

Legacy for-profits like National American University (NAUH) and Aspen Group (ASPU) trade at penny-stock levels, while Lincoln Educational (LINC) and Perdoceo (PRDO) stumble through cost-cutting cycles.

Even the supposed disruptors—Chegg (CHGG), Udemy (UDMY), and Coursera (COUR)—are faltering as user growth plateaus and AI reshapes their value proposition.

Meanwhile, SoFi (SOFI), Sallie Mae (SLM), and Maximus (MMS) thrive—not through learning, but through the management of debt.

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The Meltdown Graveyard

Below lies a sampling of the education sector’s ghost tickers—the silent casualties of a system that turned public trust into private loss.

Symbol	Institution	Status	Approx. Closure/Delisting
CLAS.U	Class Technologies	Defunct	2024
INST	Instructure (pre-acquisition)	Acquired by Thoma Bravo	2020
TWOUQ	2U, Inc.	Bankrupt	2025
CPLA	Capella University	Merged with Strayer (Strategic Ed.)	2018
ESI-OLD	ITT Technical Institute	Defunct	2016
EDMC	Education Management Corporation	Defunct	2018
COCO-OLD	Corinthian Colleges	Defunct	2015
APOL	Apollo Education Group (U. of Phoenix)	Taken Private	2017

Each ticker represents not only a failed business model—but a generation of indebted students.

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The Phoenix That Shouldn’t Have Risen

No institution better symbolizes this moral decay than the University of Phoenix and Phoenix Education Partners (PXED).

At its height, Phoenix enrolled nearly half a million students. By 2017, following federal investigations and mass defaults, Apollo Education Group—its parent company—collapsed under scrutiny.

But rather than disappearing, Phoenix was quietly resurrected through a private equity buyout led by Apollo Global Management, Vistria Group, and Najafi Companies.

Freed from public oversight, the university continued to enroll vulnerable adult learners, harvesting federal aid while shedding accountability.

In 2023, the University of Idaho’s proposed acquisition of Phoenix provoked national outrage, forcing state officials to confront a basic question: Should a public university absorb a for-profit brand built on exploitation?

The deal collapsed—but the temptation to monetize Phoenix’s infrastructure remains. In 2025, a small portion became publicly traded.  Its call centers and online systems remain models of enrollment efficiency, designed to extract just enough engagement to secure tuition payments.

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From Education to Extraction

The sector’s transformation reveals a deeper moral hazard.

If students succeed, investors profit.
If students fail, federal subsidies and servicer contracts ensure the money keeps flowing.

Executives face no downside. Shareholders are protected. The losses fall on students and taxpayers.

In this sense, the “meltdown” is not a market failure—it’s a market design.

“The winners are those who most efficiently extract value from hope.”

Public universities increasingly partner with private Online Program Managers (OPMs), leasing their brands to companies that control marketing, pricing, and student data. The once-clear line between public and for-profit education has blurred beyond recognition.

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The Quiet Winners of Collapse

A few companies continue to prosper by aligning with “practical” or “mission-safe” sectors:

• Adtalem (ATGE) in nursing and health education,

• Grand Canyon Education (LOPE) in faith-branded online degrees,

• Bright Horizons (BFAM) in corporate childcare and workforce training.

Yet all remain heavily dependent on public dollars and tax incentives. The state subsidizes their existence; the market collects the rewards.

Meanwhile, 2U’s bankruptcy leaves elite universities scrambling to explain how a publicly traded OPM, once championed as the future of online learning, could disintegrate overnight—taking with it a network of high-priced “nonprofit” certificate programs.

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A Reckoning Deferred

The College Meltdown Index exposes a system that has internalized its own failures.
Fraud has been replaced by financial engineering, transparency by outsourcing, and accountability by spin.

The real collapse is not in the market—but in moral logic. Education, once the cornerstone of social mobility, has become a speculative instrument traded between hedge funds and holding companies.

Until policymakers—and universities themselves—confront the ethics of profit in higher education, the meltdown will persist, slowly consuming what remains of the public good.

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“The real question is not whether the system will collapse, but who will rebuild it—and for whom.”

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Sources:

• Higher Education Inquirer, College Meltdown 2.0 Index (Nov. 2025)

• SEC Filings (2010–2025)

• U.S. Department of Education, Heightened Cash Monitoring Reports

• An American Sickness – Elisabeth Rosenthal

• The Goosestep – Upton Sinclair

• Medical Apartheid – Harriet A. Washington

• Body and Soul – Alondra Nelson

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot