Springer Nature, Fake Science, and the Deep Rot in Academic Publishing

Springer Nature, one of the world's largest and most prestigious academic publishers, is at the center of a growing storm over scientific credibility and the integrity of scholarly communication. Recent investigations—including a revealing article from the Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad—have exposed how fraudulent science has infiltrated top academic journals through so-called “paper mills,” where fake research is produced and sold to meet the pressure-cooker demands of the modern academic economy.

With over 9,400 employees and operations in more than 40 countries, Springer Nature is a colossal force in global publishing. Its annual revenue for 2024 was projected to reach as high as €1.85 billion, driven largely by thousands of journals across disciplines—from Nature Neuroscience and Nature Biotechnology to niche journals in pharmacology, machine vision, and business studies. It also owns the venerable Scientific American, one of the most recognizable science magazines in the English-speaking world.

But behind this massive publishing empire is a deeply flawed system—a system in which prestige and profit have become entangled, and where the imperative to “publish or perish” leads scholars to compromise ethical standards, sometimes relying on ghostwritten or entirely fabricated studies. Springer Nature and its peers, including Elsevier and Wiley, have faced mounting challenges in vetting the sheer volume of submissions, many of which are now known to be fraudulent. While publishers claim they are working to correct these issues, critics argue that such efforts are reactive, inadequate, and motivated more by public relations than a commitment to scientific rigor.

This crisis is not occurring in a vacuum. Springer Nature is not just a passive player victimized by bad actors; it is part of a profit-driven system that thrives on volume and prestige. The company has been preparing for a lucrative IPO, which valued its equity at €4.5 billion in late 2024. Its business model, like that of its competitors, relies on a steady flow of academic content—produced, reviewed, and edited largely by unpaid researchers—and then sold back to universities and libraries at exorbitant subscription fees.

This closed-access economy means that publicly funded research is often locked behind paywalls, inaccessible to the public and even to institutions with limited budgets. It’s a double-dip: taxpayers fund the research, then institutions must pay again to access the results. Meanwhile, authors surrender copyright to publishers, losing control of their own work. Academic libraries, especially at public and regional institutions, are left with shrinking access as journal subscription costs rise faster than inflation.

Springer Nature has positioned itself as a leader in open access, pledging that half of its primary research articles will be published open access in 2024. However, the open access model comes with its own set of problems. Author-pays fees can run into the thousands of dollars per article, creating a new kind of inequity where only well-funded researchers or institutions can afford to make their work accessible. This trend has led to the rise of predatory open-access journals, which exploit the model by charging fees without providing legitimate peer review.

The Higher Education Inquirer has previously documented how academic labor is exploited at every stage—from the graduate student submitting their first manuscript to the tenured professor reviewing papers without compensation. The recent revelations of widespread fraud, coupled with Springer Nature’s immense financial growth, should serve as a wake-up call. The academic publishing system is no longer merely a vehicle for knowledge sharing—it is a sprawling commercial enterprise riddled with ethical compromise.

The credibility of academic research is being eroded not just by dishonest authors, but by publishers who have allowed, and in some ways encouraged, the commodification of knowledge. With powerful institutions like Springer Nature at the helm, the scholarly publishing industry is in urgent need of structural reform—reform that prioritizes transparency, accountability, and public access over profit margins and market share.

Until then, the rot will persist beneath the glossy covers of high-impact journals, and the public’s trust in science—and higher education as a whole—will continue to suffer.

The Accreditation Curtain: A 20-Year Reflection on Transparency and the Illusion of Access (Glen McGhee)

The cancellation of the latest NACIQI (National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity) meeting brought back bitter memories that refuse to fade. 

It’s been twenty years since I traveled to Washington, DC—dressed in my best lobbying attire and carrying a meticulous roster of Department of Education staff—to visit the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) on K Street. My goal was simple, even noble: to seek answers about the opaque workings of accreditation in American higher education. What I encountered instead was a wall of silence, surveillance, and authoritarianism.

I stepped off the elevator on the seventh floor of the Department building and signed in. Under "Purpose of Visit," I wrote: Reform. I was calm, professional, and respectful. I asked to see the NACIQI Chair, Bonnie, hoping that she would be willing to speak with me about a system that, even then, was falling into disrepair. But what happened next still infuriates me.

Within seconds, two armed, uniformed guards approached me. They didn’t ask questions. They gave an ultimatum: leave or be arrested.

I eventually complied, descending into the lobby, still stunned. From there I began dialing—one by one—through the directory of names I had so carefully assembled. I called staffers, analysts, assistants, anyone who might answer. Not a single person picked up. I could feel the eyes of the guards watching me, one of them posted on the mezzanine like a sniper keeping watch over a public enemy. I was not dangerous. I was not disruptive. I was, however, unwanted.

The next day, I turned to my Congressman, Allen Boyd, whose LA generously tried to intervene. His office contacted OPE, attempting to broker a meeting on my behalf. The Department didn’t even return his call. Apparently, a sitting member of Congress—who didn’t sit on a high-ranking committee—carried no weight at the fortress of federal education oversight.

This most recent overstepping by US ED—unilaterally postponing NACIQI’s Summer 2025 meeting—reminds observers of how limited the oversight provided by NACIQI really is. It is, apparently, nothing more than a performative shell that fulfills ceremonial functions, and not much more.

I would argue that this latest episode reveals that NACIQI is less an independent watchdog and more a ceremonial body with limited real power, and so my view differs somewhat from David Halperin, because he sees more substantive activity than I do.

The history of ACICS (Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools) and SACS (Southern Association of Colleges) appearing before NACIQI illustrates how regulatory capture can manifest not only through industry influence, but also through bureaucratic design and process control. The OPE’s central role, combined with NACIQI’s limited enforcement power, has allowed failing accreditors to retain recognition for years, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of noncompliance and harm to students.

The illusion of accountability has long been a feature of the accreditation system, not a flaw. NACIQI meetings, when they occur, are tightly scripted, with carefully managed testimony and limited public engagement. The real decisions are made elsewhere, behind closed doors, often under the influence of powerful lobbying groups and entrenched bureaucracies that resist transparency and reform at every turn.

Despite the increasing scrutiny on higher education and growing public awareness of student debt, poor educational outcomes, and sham institutions, the federal recognition of accreditors remains an elite-controlled process. It is a closed loop. Institutions, accreditors, and government officials all play their roles in a carefully choreographed performance that rarely leads to systemic change. The result is a system that protects institutions at the expense of students, particularly the most vulnerable—low-income, first-generation, and minority students who are often targeted by predatory schools hiding behind federal accreditation.

This is the reality of the U.S. Department of Education’s accreditation apparatus: inaccessible, unaccountable, and increasingly symbolic. NACIQI, far from being an independent advisory body, has always functioned as a ceremonial front for political appointees and entrenched interests. It is, as I see it, just another arm of Vishnu—multiplicitous, all-seeing, but ultimately indifferent to critique or reform. Whether it’s chaired by a bureaucrat or a former wrestling executive like Linda McMahon, the outcome is the same: the process is rigged to exclude dissent and suppress scrutiny.

And yet, pundits today still fail to grasp the implications. They speak of accreditation as if it were a technocratic process guided by evidence and integrity. They act as if NACIQI were a neutral arbiter. But I know otherwise, because I was there—thrown out, silenced, and treated like a trespasser in the very institution that claims to protect educational quality and student interest.

This is more than personal bitterness. It’s about structural rot. When critics are expelled, when staff are muzzled, and when public servants ignore elected representatives, we are not dealing with oversight—we are witnessing capture. Accreditation in this country serves the accreditors and the institutions, not students, not taxpayers, and certainly not reformers.

Two decades later, the anger remains. So does the silence.

---

Sources:
Department of Education building directory and procedures (2005)
Congressional Office of Rep. Allen Boyd (archival record, 2005)
Public notices regarding NACIQI meeting cancellations (2024–2025)
David Halperin, Republic Report

Fahmi Quadir, Adtalem, and the High-Stakes Ethics of Short-Selling

In the realm of Wall Street, few figures challenge the system from within quite like Fahmi Quadir. Known in financial circles as “The Assassin,” Quadir has made a name—and a mission—for herself by exposing fraud and predatory behavior in publicly traded companies. But unlike most short-sellers chasing profits on volatility, Quadir brings a moral clarity to her work, emphasizing that short-selling can be an instrument of justice when practiced with rigor, purpose, and transparency. Her recent campaign against Adtalem Global Education, a for-profit college conglomerate, underscores the power—and danger—of this approach.

Fahmi Quadir is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Safkhet Capital, a short-only hedge fund she launched in 2017 at the age of 26. Safkhet is not your typical Wall Street operation. Built on deep forensic research and a mission to hold corporations accountable, the firm takes bold, high-conviction positions against companies it believes are engaged in deception, exploitation, or fraud.

Quadir's career trajectory is as unlikely as it is impressive. She originally planned to pursue a PhD in mathematics, but a series of encounters at New York’s National Museum of Mathematics—funded by quantitative finance giants like Renaissance Technologies—introduced her to a world where market dynamics and moral imperatives could collide. She quickly realized that capital markets held not just monetary power, but the potential to drive social change. With no formal finance background, she was identified by hedge fund insiders as a natural fit for short-selling. She dove in, eventually appearing in the 2018 Netflix documentary Dirty Money, which chronicled her pivotal role in the takedown of Valeant Pharmaceuticals.

In February 2024, Quadir spoke at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business during an event hosted by the Corporations and Society Initiative (CASI). In a conversation moderated by JD/MBA student Thomas Newcomb, she unpacked her approach to short-selling—one defined by intellectual rigor, emotional resilience, and moral conviction.

"Short selling means you borrow shares from your bank, sell them, and hope the price drops so you can buy them back at a lower price and pocket the difference," Quadir explained. “But prices can go up infinitely. The potential losses on a short are also infinite.”

That risk, she emphasized, is not theoretical—it’s lived. “You need to withstand a lot of pain,” she said. “Short-selling isn't for everyone. It’s about doing uncomfortable work, challenging popular narratives, and being willing to look like a fool—until you're proven right.”

And yet, in Quadir’s view, this discomfort is necessary. “Shorting is important for the functioning of our markets. It provides liquidity and price discovery. But in a tiny corner of the market, there are those of us who are using short selling as a way to expose injustice and correct bad capital market behavior.”

Quadir focuses on companies she believes are harming customers or committing fraud, rather than chasing momentum or hype. “We avoid situations of mass delusion,” she noted, “because mass delusion can stay delusional forever.”

Her most famous case remains the takedown of Wirecard AG, a German electronic payments firm that collapsed in 2020 amid massive accounting fraud. Safkhet's 25% short position on Wirecard was the culmination of years of research and collaboration with whistleblowers and law enforcement. It was a textbook example of what Quadir calls "story-driven" short-selling—piecing together a company's past to uncover the rot at its core.

She recounted a chilling origin story involving Wirecard’s founders, Markus Braun and Jan Marsalek—who is now a confirmed Russian agent—and an Austrian billionaire with ties to adult entertainment who allegedly used intimidation tactics to force a takeover. “When that’s part of your origin story,” she said, “whatever comes after is going to be epic.”

But Quadir’s sights have recently turned toward a different kind of fraud—one operating under the guise of education. In January 2024, Safkhet Capital released a detailed short report on Adtalem Global Education, labeling it a “toxic byproduct of an imperfect higher education system.” The report highlighted Adtalem’s dependence on federal student aid—more than 70% of its revenue—and exposed dismal outcomes at its institutions, including Walden and Chamberlain universities, both of which serve a disproportionately high number of Black and working-class women.

The report also noted a financial responsibility score of 0.2 out of 3.0—far below the threshold used by the U.S. Department of Education to flag institutions at risk of mismanaging federal funds. In Quadir’s view, Adtalem wasn’t just financially shaky—it was “completely uninvestable.”

The market agreed. Following Safkhet’s report, Adtalem’s stock dropped 19% in a single day, with further losses in the days that followed. The company attempted to halt trading and accused Quadir of “short and distort” tactics—a claim that fell flat. “It was very satisfying after that hold was released to see the market validate our thesis,” she said. “Their strategy backfired.”

At Stanford, Quadir reflected on why she made the Adtalem report public: “There was an informational vacuum around this company. The shareholder base was largely passive. No one was doing the kind of research or analysis we were doing.”

But Quadir is quick to point out that short-sellers alone cannot fix a broken system. “Nothing is going to change if there isn’t enforcement,” she said. “We need to have some high-profile cases where people go to jail. These characters continue to get away with it or settle, and what happens? Their stocks go up.”

She remains hopeful, however, that markets—if given the right incentives—can self-correct. “I think the greatest believers in market efficiency have to be short sellers. I believe capital markets can correct bad behavior, and that benefits all of us.”

Short-selling, when practiced ethically, is not about sabotage. It is about storytelling, investigation, and risk—a lot of risk. Quadir’s approach requires patience, emotional stamina, and intellectual courage. It is not for the faint of heart. But in a world where regulators are often captured and media attention can be fleeting, short-sellers like Quadir play an essential, if controversial, role.

Her work against Adtalem is not just a case study in financial activism. It is a call to reexamine how markets reward failure, how federal funds prop up predatory institutions, and how silence—especially in higher education—can be bought. As Quadir puts it, “We have the power to affect change. We just have to be willing to take the hits.”

Sources

This article draws significantly from the February 2024 Stanford Graduate School of Business event, A Conversation with Fahmi Quadir, Wall Street’s Fearless Short Seller, hosted by the Corporations and Society Initiative (CASI). The event transcript and summary are available at https://casi.stanford.edu/news/conversation-fahmi-quadir-wall-streets-fearless-short-seller.

Additional information was compiled from the Safkhet Capital short report on Adtalem Global Education (January 2024), publicly available statements by Adtalem Global Education, coverage of Adtalem’s stock movement by MarketWatch and Bloomberg, investigations into Wirecard by the Financial Times, and Quadir’s portrayal in the 2018 Netflix documentary Dirty Money.

Legal responses to Safkhet’s report were also noted from Pomerantz LLP and Block & Leviton, which opened shareholder investigations into Adtalem in January 2024. Data from the U.S. Department of Education regarding Title IV funding and financial responsibility scores was used to contextualize Adtalem’s regulatory risk.

For further background on short-selling’s role in price discovery and enforcement gaps in higher education, see related coverage in The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed.

As the Wealth Gap Widens, Executive Security Spending Surges

As economic inequality intensifies in the United States, corporate leaders are allocating more resources to personal security. CEOs, board members, and high-ranking executives in multiple sectors—including healthcare, tech, logistics, finance, and higher education—are investing in expanded protective measures in response to growing public anger and incidents like the 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione.

In 2023, Meta Platforms spent $14 million on CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal security. Alphabet spent $5.9 million, Amazon reported $1.6 million, and JPMorgan Chase allocated $1.2 million for CEO protection, according to public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These expenditures have risen steadily in recent years. The Institute for Policy Studies reports an 11 percent increase in executive security costs among the top 500 U.S. firms between 2021 and 2023.

The killing of Thompson in December 2024 catalyzed a wave of security upgrades. According to Business Insider, 40 UnitedHealthcare executives hired bodyguards, relocated, or altered travel routines. UnitedHealth later disclosed $1.7 million in new executive security costs, according to STAT News. Analysts and security firms have since labeled the trend the “Luigi effect.”

These developments are not confined to healthcare. Energy, retail, agriculture, and higher education executives are also responding to rising threats—many rooted in public dissatisfaction over price inflation, labor exploitation, and environmental degradation. In higher education, university presidents have increased security in response to student debt protests and adjunct faculty organizing. In logistics, following union drives and layoffs at UPS and Amazon, senior officials enhanced security at warehouses and corporate campuses.

These actions are occurring in a regulatory environment that has shifted in favor of corporate consolidation. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), under financial and political pressure, has seen a reduction in staffing and enforcement capacity. According to the FTC’s FY2024 budget report, the agency operated with fewer than 1,100 full-time employees—a 20 percent decline from a decade earlier. Congressional budget cuts and increased legal challenges from corporations have further limited the FTC’s ability to investigate and block mergers, enforce antitrust laws, or monitor deceptive corporate practices.

This decline in federal oversight has emboldened monopolistic behavior across industries. It has also allowed firms to suppress labor rights, raise prices, and consolidate control—actions that contribute directly to the growing frustration among workers and consumers. With weakened regulatory agencies and stagnant wages, the perception of impunity among corporate elites has only sharpened public resentment.

The Higher Education Inquirer affirms its commitment to nonviolence. Acts like those carried out by Luigi Mangione are not acceptable responses to injustice. But his case has become a symbolic reference point, signaling how far some individuals may go when democratic tools of accountability are weakened. Escalating security budgets are not just a reaction to individual threats—they are a measurable indicator of social distrust and institutional breakdown.

The solution is not fortification, but reform. Corporate leaders have an opportunity to respond by narrowing executive compensation gaps, supporting collective bargaining, addressing climate and public health impacts, and reducing their influence over regulatory systems. The FTC’s decline is a structural signal, just like the rise in CEO security costs. Both reveal a system drifting further from democratic accountability.

The path forward must be shaped by transparency, public policy, and peaceful resistance. If not, the costs—financial, social, and moral—will continue to rise.

Sources

• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Proxy Filings: Meta (2023), Amazon (2023), Alphabet (2023), JPMorgan Chase (2023)

• Business Insider. “UnitedHealthcare Execs Hired Bodyguards After CEO’s Killing.” June 2025

• STAT News. “UnitedHealth Discloses $1.7 Million in Security Costs Post-Murder.” April 2025

• Institute for Policy Studies. Executive Excess 2023

• Federal Trade Commission. “Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Budget Justification.” https://www.ftc.gov

• Economic Policy Institute. “CEO Pay Has Grown 1,209% Since 1978.” 2023

• Pew Research Center. “Public Trust in Institutions, 2023”

• Chronicle of Higher Education. “Presidents Increase Security Amid Campus Protests.” 2024

• New York Post. “Executives Rush to Boost Security in Wake of ‘Luigi Effect’.” May 2025

Southern New Hampshire University Layoffs: Cold Emails, Broken Promises, and the Slow Unraveling of America’s Largest Robocollege

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), once the darling of online education reformers and a favorite of the Obama administration, continues its quiet but relentless shedding of human labor. On Friday, June 27, 2025, roughly 60 employees were laid off without warning—no calls, no meetings, no human connection. Just a cold, impersonal email from new president Lisa Marsh Ryerson.

“There was no sincerity,” said one source familiar with the layoffs. “No real communication. Just a robotic email. No opportunity for questions, no acknowledgment of people’s service.”

This latest layoff is the third major reduction in force since 2023. And while the numbers may seem modest for an institution that claims to serve more than 160,000 students, the ripple effects are anything but small. They confirm a broader trend that SNHU insiders have been warning about for months: a once-praised institution is hollowing itself out in silence.

 
A University Without a Soul?

The June 27 layoffs, like those before them, were handled with stunning disregard for the people who built and maintained the university’s infrastructure. Staff across departments described the news as “dehumanizing,” “cold,” and “contrary to everything SNHU claims to value.” No information was provided about who was let go or why. And as of this writing, SNHU has offered no public acknowledgment.

This is the same university that advertises itself as “student-centered,” “innovative,” and “empathetic.” It appears those values stop at the edge of the marketing department.

“They preach empathy to students,” one employee noted. “But when it came to their own staff, there was none.”

 
The Robocollege Paradox

SNHU’s rise to prominence was driven by two powerful forces: automation and marketing. Often described by critics as “America’s largest robocollege,” SNHU relies on heavily automated instructional systems, pre-scripted faculty responses, and templated course shells. More than 8,000 part-time instructors serve a student body of mostly remote learners—while just 130 full-time instructors remain.

The result is a system that mimics personalization at scale, but often delivers an education that is generic, repetitive, and impersonal. Now, it seems, the internal culture is mirroring that very structure: efficient, indifferent, and inhumane.

In recent months, students have also begun to complain—about outdated materials, recycled syllabi, and lackluster engagement from instructors who are stretched thin and closely monitored. Meanwhile, internal critics point to a bloated administration where promotions are tied to personal loyalty rather than competence, and where technical expertise is often sidelined in favor of political convenience.

 
New President, Same Old Playbook

Lisa Marsh Ryerson’s appointment as SNHU’s new president was seen by some as a chance for renewal. A respected nonprofit leader and former head of AARP Foundation, Ryerson was expected to bring transparency, vision, and accountability. But her first major act—a mass layoff delivered by email—suggests a continuation of the old regime’s worst habits.

Under her predecessor Paul LeBlanc, SNHU transformed from a small regional college to a billion-dollar online giant. But that transformation was not without costs: overreliance on adjuncts, erosion of curriculum quality, and a growing divide between leadership and labor.

Ryerson’s June email—void of any opportunity for dialogue or recognition—has raised questions about whether her presidency will offer anything different, or whether SNHU’s machine-like management culture is simply too entrenched.

 
A Warning to the Sector

What’s happening at SNHU is not unique, but it is instructive. As more universities turn to online models and data-driven scalability, the human core of education is being sacrificed. Staff are seen as expendable. Adjuncts are interchangeable. And students are increasingly treated as customers rather than learners.

In this environment, SNHU has become both a symbol of possibility and a cautionary tale: a nonprofit that operates like a for-profit, with all the social costs but none of the public accountability.

The Higher Education Inquirer has been tracking SNHU’s internal crises for months:

Sept. 27, 2024: America’s Largest Robocollege Facing Resistance from Human Workers and Student Complaints About Curriculum

June 27, 2025: Layoffs at Southern New Hampshire University

These are not isolated events. They are part of a long-term unraveling of an institution that once promised transformation—but now seems trapped in its own machinery.

We will continue to report on SNHU and invite current and former employees, students, and stakeholders to share their experiences confidentially. You are not alone.

If you work at SNHU or have insider knowledge, contact the Higher Education Inquirer at gmcghee@aya.yale.edu.  All correspondence will be kept confidential.  

Academic closures, mergers, cuts: a summer 2025 update (Bryan Alexander)

Greetings from early July. I’m back home in northern Virginia where the heat is blazing and the humidity sopping.  Weather.com thinks it “feels like 102° F” and I agree.  The cats also agree, because they retreated elegantly inside to air conditioning after a brief outside stroll.

I wrote “back home” because my wife and I spent last week celebrating our 32nd anniversary in Canada (here’s one snapshot).  Afterwards I was hoping to get back into the swing of things, blogging, Substacking, vlogging various topics already under way, but things have been advancing at such a manic pace that I have to leap in in a hurry.

Case in point: after blogging about campus closures, cuts, and mergers last month more closures and cuts (albeit no mergers) have appeared in just the past few weeks.  In this post you’ll see a list of these, with links to supporting news stories and official documents.  Alas, this has become a tradition on this site.  (From last year: March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May, June, July, September, November. From this year: February, June.) My book on peak higher education is now in the editing process; hopefully by the time it appears the topic won’t be simply historical.

Today we’ll touch on one closure, then focus on cuts, with a few reflections at the end.

1. Closing colleges and universities

In Michigan Siena Heights University (Catholic) will close after the upcoming academic year.  The reasons: “the financial situation, operational challenges, and long-term sustainability,” according to the official statement.  A local account concurs, “citing rising costs and stiffer competition for new students.”

The official website doesn’t reflect this on its front page.

2. Program and staffing cuts

Also in Michigan, Concordia University (Lutheran) is shutting down most of its Ann Arbor campus programs. A much smaller set of offerings is what’s next:

Starting June 2025, the private Lutheran institution will offer just nine programs — all in medical-related fields — on its physical campus. That’s down from 53 campus programs the university currently lists on its website. It will offer another seven online programs, mostly in education fields, which is down from more than 60 currently.

Also nearby, Michigan State University (public, research) announced its intention to cut faculty and staff positions this year.  The drivers: inflation boosting costs, especially in health care; Trump administration research funding cuts; possible state support cuts; potential international student reduction.

Brown University (research; Rhode Island) is planning to cut an unspecified number of staff this summer.  Furthermore, “[a]dditional measures include scaling back capital spending and adjusting graduate admissions levels after limiting budget growth for doctoral programs earlier this year.”  The reasons here are financial, but based on the Trump administration’s cuts to federal research funding, not enrollment problems.

The Indiana Commission for Higher Education announced shutting down a huge sweep of academic programs across that state’s public universities.  More than 400 degrees will end, with 75 ended outright and 333 “merged or consolidated” with other programs.  The whole list is staggering.  There’s a lot of detail in that Indiana plan, from defining student minima to establishing various options for campuses, appealing closures to timelines for revving up new degrees.  It’s unclear how many faculty and/or staff cuts will follow.

Columbia College Chicago (private, arts focused) laid off twenty full-time professors.  The school is facing enrollment declines and financial problems. Nearly all of these faculty member are – were – tenure track, which makes this another example of the queen sacrifice.

University of California-Santa Cruz (public, research) is terminating its German and Persian language programs, laying off their instructors.  This sounds part of a broader effort to cut costs against a deficit, a deficit caused by “rising labor costs and constrained student enrollment growth,” according to officials.

Boston University (private, research) announced it would lay off 120 staff members as part of a budget-cutting strategy. BU will also close 120 open staff positions and “around 20 positions will undergo a change in schedule” (I’m not sure what that means – shift from full time to part?).    The reasons: Trump administration cuts and uncertainty, plus the longstanding issues of “rising inflation, changing demographics, declining graduate enrollment, and the need to adapt to new technologies.”

The president of Temple University (public, research, Pennsylvania) discussed job cuts as part of a 5% budget cut.  Reasons include lower enrollment which led to “a structural deficit [for which] university reserves were used to cover expenses.”

Champlain College (Vermont) is closing some low-enrolling majors. The avowed goal is to
“design a new ‘career-focused’ curriculum for the fall of 2026 ‘that is focused on and driven by employer needs and student interests.'”

The accounting program, for instance, saw its enrollment decline from 60 students in 2015 to 20 in February 2024, according to documents from the school’s Academic Affairs Committee. The law program, similarly, had little student interest, Hernandez said, and had only three students apply in the fall of 2023, while the data analytics program had only two applications.

At the same time the school is facing serious challenges.  Enrollment has sunk from 4,778 students in 2016 to 3,200 last year.  The college ran deficits in some reason years and a federal audit criticized the amount of debt it carries.  This year “the college’s bond rating was lowered, and its outlook downgraded to ‘negative’ by S&P Global Ratings.”

Looking across the lake from Burlington, near Champlain’s campus back in 2017: a cheery image to balance sad stories.

A small but symbolic cut is under way at Albright College (private, liberal arts, Pennsylvania), whose president decided to sell their art college at auction.  “It includes pieces by Karel Appel, Romare Bearden, Robert Colescott, Bridget Riley, Leon Golub, Jasper Johns, Jacob Lawrence, Marisol, Gordon Parks, Jesús Rafael Soto and Frederick Eversley, among others.”

Why do this?  according to the administration, it was a question of relative value:

“We needed to stop the bleeding,” says James Gaddy, vice-president for administration at Albright, noting that over the past two years the college has experienced shortfalls of $20m. Calling himself and the college’s president Debra Townsley, both of whom were hired last year, “turn-around specialists”, Gaddy claimed that Albright’s 2,300-object art collection was “not core to our mission” as an educational institution and was costing the college more than the art is worth.

“The value of the artworks is not extraordinary,” he says, estimating the total value of the pieces consigned to Pook & Pook at $200,000, but claimed that the cost of maintaining the collection was high and that the cost of staffing the art gallery where the objects were displayed and (mostly) stored was “more than half a million dollars” a year.

A screenshot of some of the auction lots.

3 Budget crises, programs cut, not laying off people yet

Cornell University is preparing staff cuts in the wake of Trump administration research funding reductions.

The University of Minnesota’s administration agreed to a 7.5% cut across its units, along with a tuition increase.  The president cited frozen state support and rising costs.

New York University (NYU) announced a 3% budget cut.  So far this is about “emphasizing cuts to such functions as travel, events, meals, and additional other-than-personal-service (OTPS) items.” NYU will keep on not hiring new administrators and is encouraging some administrators and tenured professors to retire.

Yale University paused ten ongoing construction projects because of concerns about cuts to federal monies.

Reflections

Many of these stories reflect trends I’ve been observing for a while.  Declining enrollment is a major problem for most institutions. The strategy of cutting jobs to balance a budget remains one at least some leaders find useful. The humanities tend to suffer more cuts than others (scroll down the Indiana pdf for a sample). Depending on the state, state governments can increase budget problems or alter academic program offerings.

The second Trump administration’s campaign against higher education is drawing blood, as we can see from universities citing the federal research cuts in their budgets and personnel decisions. Note that this is before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s provisions take hold, from capping student aid to increasing endowment taxes. And this is also before whatever decrease will appear with international student enrollment this fall. (Here’s my video series on Trump vs higher ed; new episode is in the pipeline.)

Note the number of elite institutions in today’s post.  In the past I’ve been told that the closures, mergers, and cuts primarily hit low-ranked and marginal institutions, which was sometimes true. But now we’re seeing top tier universities enacting budget cuts, thanks to the Trump administration.

Let me close by reminding everyone that these are human stories. Program cuts hurt students’ course of student. Budget cuts impact instructors and staff of all kinds. When we see the statistics pile up we can lose sight of the personal reality.  My heart goes out to everyone injured by these institutional moves.

Finally, I’d like to invite anyone with information on a college or university’s plans to close, merge, or cut to share them with me, either as comments on this post, as notes on social media, or by contacting me privately here.  I write these posts based largely on public, open intelligence (news reports, investigations, roundups) but also through tips, since higher education sometimes has issues with transparency.  We need better information on these events.

(thanks to Will Emerson, Karl Hakkarainen, Kristen Nyht, Cristián Opazo, Peter Shea, Jason Siko, George Station, Nancy Smyth, Ed Webb, and Andrew Zubiri for supplying links and feedback)

This article first appeared at bryanalexander.org

University of Phoenix Uses “Sandwich Moms” to Sell a Debt Trap

In a recent blog post republished on LinkedIn, the University of Phoenix casts itself as a champion for the “sandwich generation” of working mothers—those who are simultaneously raising children and caring for aging parents. The post, co-branded with the lifestyle platform Motherly, portrays the for-profit university as a source of hope for exhausted, career-stalled caregivers. It offers empathy, statistics, and stories about resilience. But what it doesn’t offer is transparency about the financial harm the University of Phoenix has caused to hundreds of thousands of women just like them.

Behind the compassionate messaging is a decades-long record of exploitation, debt, and broken promises. According to data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and analyzed by the Higher Education Inquirer, nearly one million former University of Phoenix students owe a combined $21.6 billion in student loan debt. That includes many single mothers and caregivers who were targeted by Phoenix recruiters with promises of flexible degrees and life-changing job opportunities.

The average borrower carries more than $22,000 in federal student debt, and many have seen little to no return on that investment. Worse, tens of thousands of former students have filed Borrower Defense claims with the U.S. Department of Education, asserting that they were defrauded by the university. At least 19,000 of these claims have already been approved as part of the Sweet v. Cardona class action settlement. Phoenix was one of dozens of schools whose practices were deemed harmful enough to merit loan cancellation.

Despite this troubling history, the University of Phoenix continues to market itself as a solution to the very problems it helps perpetuate. The blog post in question focuses on how caregiving responsibilities are limiting women’s careers and how many moms are afraid to speak openly about their dual roles at work. These are serious and well-documented social issues. But the proposed solution—enrolling in a Phoenix program—too often leads to more financial pressure rather than less.

The Higher Education Inquirer has filed multiple FOIA requests related to the University of Phoenix and its pending acquisition by the University of Idaho through Apollo Global Management and the Vistria Group. These include documents related to the total student debt associated with the university, the volume and status of fraud claims, and protective provisions tied to federal liabilities. Taxpayers in Idaho may soon be responsible for this debt legacy, should the controversial acquisition proceed.

None of this is disclosed in Phoenix’s marketing materials. There is no mention of the $191 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive advertising. There is no reference to the school's declining enrollment, cratering reputation, or the tens of thousands of students who left without a degree. Instead, sandwich generation moms are offered inspiration and vague promises of career advancement through convenient online programs.

But convenience is no substitute for credibility. What mothers need are real systemic supports: paid family leave, affordable childcare and eldercare, union protections, and public investment in affordable education. They don’t need another layer of student loan debt imposed by a university with a well-documented record of exploiting their aspirations.

Phoenix’s message may resonate emotionally, but it is ultimately a predatory sales pitch disguised as empowerment. Until for-profit schools like Phoenix are held fully accountable—and until working families have access to genuine public alternatives—we must remain critical of marketing campaigns that prey on the vulnerable.

Sources
Higher Education Inquirer. “New Data Show Nearly a Million University of Phoenix Debtors Owe $21.6 Billion.” July 2024. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2024/07/new-data-show-nearly-million-university.html
Higher Education Inquirer. “Pending FOIAs Regarding the University of Phoenix.” December 2024. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2024/12/pending-foias-regarding-university-of.html
Federal Trade Commission. “University of Phoenix and Parent Company to Pay $191 Million to Settle FTC Charges.” December 2019. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/12/university-phoenix-parent-company-pay-191-million-settle-ftc-charges-they-deceived-prospective-students
U.S. Department of Education. College Scorecard. https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/

Harvard Faculty Union Threatens Resistance to Any Deal with Trump Administration

Faculty at Harvard University are warning that they will "strongly oppose" any agreement the university might strike with the Trump administration regarding ongoing threats to federal funding and alleged civil rights violations. The Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), representing more than 300 faculty members, issued the warning amid secretive negotiations between Harvard leadership and federal officials.

In recent months, the Trump administration has escalated efforts to discipline elite universities, accusing Harvard of failing to protect Jewish students and violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Department of Education has threatened to withhold all federal funding from the university, a move that could disrupt billions of dollars in research and student aid. While Harvard has filed suit to block the funding cuts, concerns have emerged that university leaders may quietly negotiate a settlement to avoid further political retaliation.

Harvard faculty say they were not consulted about the negotiations and reject any deal that would compromise academic freedom, institutional autonomy, or faculty governance. Kirsten Weld, president of the AAUP chapter, told the Boston Globe that “the red line of academic freedom… has already been crossed” if administrators are making decisions without full faculty participation. Professor of Classics Richard Thomas emphasized that any arrangement that gives the government influence over curriculum, hiring, or research is unacceptable, stating, “I expect that the AAUP and the faculty will react very strongly against any sort of deal.”

The AAUP’s position is backed by a recent survey reported by The Harvard Crimson, showing that 71 percent of responding faculty oppose any agreement with the Trump administration, while 98 percent support Harvard’s legal efforts to block the federal funding freeze. The faculty response reflects not only opposition to political interference, but also frustration with what they see as a lack of transparency from Harvard’s top leadership.

The university's conflict with the federal government began after the administration accused Harvard and other elite schools of fostering environments hostile to Jewish students, citing demonstrations and social media posts in the wake of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Critics argue that these investigations are politically motivated and designed to suppress speech critical of U.S. foreign policy or Israeli actions. By threatening to cut off Title IV funds and research grants, the administration is leveraging unprecedented financial pressure on higher education institutions.

Harvard’s AAUP chapter, like others formed in recent years, lacks formal collective bargaining rights under U.S. labor law. But its members are prepared to organize using petitions, public pressure, and other means of faculty protest. As universities become central targets in broader culture wars, the line between political influence and academic control continues to blur. Faculty organizers view this moment as a test case not only for Harvard’s values, but for the future of academic freedom across the country.

For the Higher Education Inquirer, which has long stood in support of labor rights and academic self-governance, this case highlights the growing need for faculty and student workers to assert their roles in shaping institutional responses to political coercion. Whether Harvard’s leadership will listen to its faculty remains to be seen. But the message from the AAUP is clear: any backroom deal with the federal government that sacrifices core academic principles will face fierce and public opposition.

Sources
The Boston Globe, July 6, 2025: “Harvard professor union will ‘strongly’ oppose any deal between school and Trump, members say”
The Harvard Crimson, July 2025: “Faculty Oppose Deal With Trump Administration, Survey Finds”
The Washington Post, April 21, 2025: “Harvard sues the Trump administration in escalating confrontation”
Politico, April 17, 2025: “The Ivy League resistance is just getting started”

Older (Desperate) Folks Targeted for Online Robocolleges

In recent years, the profile of student loan borrowers in the United States has shifted dramatically. While student debt is often associated with young adults entering the workforce, a rapidly growing number of older Americans—those aged 50 and above—are carrying significant student loan balances, revealing a troubling new dimension of the nation’s student debt crisis.

As of mid-2025, approximately 7.8 million Americans aged 50 and older hold federal student loan debt, representing about 6% of adults in this age group. Many have borrowed not only for their own education but also to finance their children’s or grandchildren’s schooling. Others have returned to college later in life, seeking new skills or credentials to remain competitive. Yet, these borrowers often face unique challenges that have been exacerbated by the rise of so-called “robocolleges.”

Robocolleges are online institutions that aggressively market to older adults, promising flexible schedules and quick credentials that can lead to better job prospects. However, many of these institutions have come under scrutiny for their low graduation rates, high tuition costs, and poor outcomes for students. Unlike traditional colleges, robocolleges often rely heavily on automated systems and minimal personal support, leaving vulnerable older learners with little guidance about loan obligations or realistic career prospects.

These institutions have played a significant role in trapping many older Americans in unsustainable debt. Borrowers are lured by the promise of upward mobility but frequently end up with degrees that hold limited value in the labor market. The high cost of attendance combined with aggressive recruitment tactics has led many to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt with few prospects for repayment.

Among older borrowers—6.2 million between 50 and 61 years old, and 2.8 million aged 62 or older—the average federal student loan balance for the 50–61 cohort is around $47,000, the highest among all age groups. Around 8% are delinquent on their loans, with median delinquent balances near $11,500. For those over 62, approximately 452,000 are in default and face the threat of Social Security benefit garnishment, though recent government actions have temporarily paused such garnishments.

The debt explosion among older Americans has been dramatic: over the past two decades, the number of borrowers aged 60 and above has increased sixfold, with total debt rising nearly twentyfold. Robocolleges, with their predatory recruitment and inadequate educational outcomes, are a central piece of this puzzle, helping to drive up borrowing without delivering commensurate value.

This growing crisis underscores the urgent need for policy reforms tailored to the realities faced by older borrowers. There must be greater transparency and accountability from robocolleges, stronger consumer protections, and expanded debt relief options that reflect the challenges of late-in-life borrowing. Additionally, educational counseling and financial literacy support designed specifically for older students are crucial.

The student debt crisis in America is no longer only about young adults trying to start their careers—it increasingly jeopardizes the financial security and dignity of older generations. As robocolleges continue to trap vulnerable older learners in cycles of debt, the urgency for reform becomes even clearer.

The Higher Education Inquirer will continue to investigate and report on this evolving crisis, amplifying the voices of those caught in the crosshairs of an expanding student debt epidemic.

Layoffs at UPS and Microsoft Highlight Economic Shifts and Technological Upheaval

This week brought sobering news for American workers as both United Parcel Service (UPS) and Microsoft announced significant job cuts, signaling deeper transformations in the logistics and tech industries. These developments reflect a broader shift toward automation, artificial intelligence, and corporate restructuring—at the expense of labor stability.

At UPS, up to 20,000 jobs are on the chopping block as the company executes what it calls a “network reconfiguration.” The company is closing 73 U.S. facilities as it pulls back from overreliance on Amazon deliveries and responds to declining package volumes. Instead of abrupt firings, UPS has begun offering voluntary buyout packages to its full-time drivers. These packages include pension and health benefits, but the move has drawn sharp criticism from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Union leadership argues that the company is violating the spirit, if not the letter, of its national contract, which mandates the creation of 22,500 new union jobs.

The company's restructuring comes amid ongoing automation in shipping and warehousing, rising costs, and global economic instability. Earlier this year, UPS closed major hubs in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin—moves that signal a long-term realignment in how the company manages logistics. Some analysts see this as the largest transformation of UPS’s infrastructure in decades, one designed to cut costs and compete more aggressively with Amazon and FedEx. But the timing, just months after a much-publicized contract negotiation with the Teamsters, has many workers feeling blindsided.

While UPS sheds labor in the physical world, Microsoft is doing the same in the digital. This week, the company confirmed it will cut approximately 9,000 employees—about 4 percent of its global workforce—as it pivots even more aggressively into artificial intelligence. The layoffs affect sales, marketing, and engineering divisions, but some of the most significant cuts came from the Xbox gaming division. Entire studios have been shuttered, including The Initiative, and long-anticipated projects such as the “Perfect Dark” reboot and Rare’s Everwild have been quietly canceled.

Microsoft leadership has said the cuts are intended to reduce management layers and “streamline for innovation,” but internally, the mood is grim. One executive was criticized for suggesting that laid-off staff should use Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT to deal with the emotional fallout and rewrite their résumés. The post was quickly deleted, but it underscores the growing disconnect between executive leadership and a fatigued workforce. The tech giant is reportedly spending close to $80 billion on AI infrastructure this fiscal year, and workers are feeling the cost.

This is not the first round of layoffs at Microsoft in 2025. The company had previously let go of thousands of employees in January and March as it accelerated AI hiring and scaled down non-essential departments. Workers in online forums and internal Slack groups have expressed confusion and frustration over repeated restructuring that often comes with little transparency or warning.

These two major corporate announcements offer a powerful case study in the forces reshaping the modern economy. At UPS, the pressure comes from changing consumer behavior, automation, and strained labor-management relations. At Microsoft, it’s about replacing human capital with machine learning and making deep structural changes to chase higher profits in an AI-first world. In both cases, the workers pay the price.

For students and faculty in higher education—especially those studying labor relations, supply chain management, computer science, and organizational behavior—these events are a stark reminder that stability in the job market is no longer a given. The old promises of lifelong employment or career ladders within major corporations are being eroded by technological disruption and financialization.

Universities may trumpet partnerships with Microsoft or logistics giants like UPS, but they must also reckon with what these partnerships mean for the future of work. Are students being trained for careers that may not exist in five years? Are institutions complicit in funneling talent into systems that undervalue human labor?

Layoffs at this scale are not isolated events. They are structural. And for millions of Americans—workers, students, graduates—they represent not just temporary hardship, but a preview of the next economic reality.

Sources: Reuters, The Times UK, ABC7, Supply Chain Dive, Polygon, The Verge, Reddit, Teamsters.org

Blue Falcons: Politicians, Government Agencies, and Nonprofits Serve Themselves, Not Those Who Have Served

“Blue Falcon”—military slang for a “Buddy F****r”—refers to someone who betrays their comrades to get ahead. It’s a fitting label for disgraced U.S. Congressman Duncan Hunter, a Marine Corps veteran convicted of misusing campaign funds while cloaking himself in patriotic rhetoric. But Hunter isn’t alone. He’s emblematic of a broader betrayal—one that involves politicians, bureaucrats, predatory schools, and veteran-serving nonprofits. Together, they form an ecosystem where self-interest thrives, and veterans are left behind.

Despite endless platitudes about “supporting our troops,” the systems designed to serve veterans—especially in education—are failing. Two of the most generous and ambitious benefits ever created for veterans, the Post-9/11 GI Bill (PGIB) and Department of Defense Tuition Assistance (TA), are now riddled with waste, abuse, and profiteering. The real beneficiaries aren’t veterans, but an extensive network of for-profit colleges, lobbying firms, and institutions that exploit them.

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The GI Bill and DOD Tuition Assistance: A Pipeline for Predators

The Post-9/11 GI Bill was supposed to be a transformative benefit—a way to reward veterans with the chance to reintegrate, retrain, and succeed in the civilian world. At more than $13 billion annually, it is the single most generous higher education grant program in the country. According to a report highlighted by Derek Newton in Forbes, the GI Bill now costs more than all state scholarships and grants combined and represents half of all Pell Grant spending.

And yet, it isn’t working.

A groundbreaking study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)—conducted by researchers from Texas A&M, the University of Michigan, Dartmouth, William & Mary, and even the U.S. Department of the Treasury—delivers a scathing indictment of the program’s effectiveness. According to the report, veterans who used PGIB benefits actually earned less nine years after separating from the military than peers who didn’t attend college at all. The researchers found:

“The PGIB reduced average annual earnings nine years after separation from the Army by $900 (on a base of $32,000). Under a variety of conservative assumptions, veterans are unlikely to recoup these reduced earnings during their working careers.”

The reason? Too many veterans are enrolling in heavily marketed, low-value schools—institutions that offer little return and often leave students without degrees or meaningful credentials. Veterans from lower-skilled military occupations and those with lower test scores were particularly likely to fall into this trap. These “less advantaged” veterans not only saw worse labor market outcomes but were more likely to spend their GI Bill benefits at for-profit schools with dismal outcomes.

Even worse, the report estimated that the cost to taxpayers for every additional marginal bachelor’s degree produced by PGIB is between $486,000 and $590,000. That’s beyond inefficient—it’s exploitative.

In the Forbes article we put it bluntly:

“This is sad to say, that the GI Bill does not work for many servicemembers, veterans and their families. What's even sadder is that if you drill into the data, to the institutional and program level, it will likely be worse. There are many programs, for-profit and non-profit, that do not work out for servicemembers, veterans, and their families.”

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Tuition Assistance and the DOD’s Open Wallet

The Department of Defense’s Tuition Assistance program also faces exploitation. With few controls, it serves as an open faucet for bad actors who aggressively recruit active-duty service members through deceptive advertising, partnerships with base education offices, and endorsements from shady nonprofits. Just as with the GI Bill, predatory institutions see DOD TA not as an education resource, but as a predictable stream of federal cash.

Military leadership has done little to intervene. The same institutions flagged for fraud and poor outcomes continue to operate freely, bolstered by industry lobbyists and revolving-door influence in Washington.

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Nonprofits and Politicians: Wolves in Patriotic Clothing

The betrayal doesn’t stop with colleges. Many large veteran-serving nonprofits and “military-friendly” initiatives exist more for image than impact. Instead of helping veterans, they prop up harmful systems and launder legitimacy for the very institutions exploiting the military community.

Meanwhile, Congress talks a big game but routinely fails to act. Lawmakers from both parties show up for ribbon cuttings and Veterans Day speeches, but many take campaign donations from subprime colleges and education conglomerates that prey on veterans. They refuse to close known loopholes—like the infamous 90/10 rule—that incentivize for-profit schools to chase GI Bill funds with deceptive tactics.

And all the while, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)—underfunded, overburdened, and politically manipulated—struggles to provide the basic services veterans were promised.

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A Sad Reality, and a Call to Action

It’s a bitter irony that programs designed to lift up veterans often lead them into deeper debt, poorer job prospects, and wasted years. The data from NBER, the findings from watchdogs like Derek Newton, and the lived experience of thousands of veterans all point to one conclusion: the Post-9/11 GI Bill, as currently administered, is failing. And so is the broader system around it.

Veterans deserve better. They deserve:

• Strict oversight of predatory colleges and training programs

• Transparency in outcomes for veteran-serving nonprofits

• Accountability from lawmakers and government agencies

• Equitable investment in public and community college options

• A fundamental shift from patriotic lip service to real systemic reform

Until then, the Blue Falcons will continue to circle—posing as allies while feasting on the very benefits veterans fought to earn.

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The Higher Education Inquirer will continue exposing the policies, institutions, and individuals who exploit veterans under the guise of service. If you have insider information or want to share your story, contact us confidentially at gmcghee@aya.yale.edu.