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  • How funding policy has affected foundation year provision

    How funding policy has affected foundation year provision

    The coming academic year (2025-26) is the first in which classroom-based foundation year (FY) fees will be capped at a level below the higher level fee cap.

    For many who have experienced or supported foundation year tuition this is a retreat from a proven method for supporting people who have been failed by compulsory schooling in continuing their education. Critics would point to a few years of sustained growth, particularly in franchised provision, that is of more questionable quality and benefit.

    Foundation years are an anomaly in that they sit neither at level three (alongside other pre-university qualifications like A levels or the Access to HE Diploma [AHED]) or level four (alongside higher national diplomas, and the first years of both undergraduate degrees and higher technical qualifications). As such, they will face the worst of both worlds: level 3 funding (for classroom-based provision) covered by level 4 repayment rules and level 4 regulatory interventions.

    Why cut?

    In a ministerial statement that, in a dazzling display of self-awareness, actually used the phrase “fix the foundations” twice, the Secretary of State set a fee limit of £5,760 (the maximum current cost of an AHED, though in practice fees are nearer £4,000) as a maximum for “classroom-based” (non-STEM) foundation years on 4 November 2024.

    There’s a paragraph on the ostensible reasoning for this that is worth bearing in mind:

    The government recognises the importance of foundation years for promoting access to higher education, but they can be delivered more efficiently in classroom-based subjects, at a lower cost to students.

    This sounds more like an access-focused intervention rather than an attempt to cut provision, although it is rather divorced from the cost of provision. This is despite a 2023 report from IFF Research which noted that, based on the available data and on a series of interviews:

    the cost of delivering FY and the first year of a UG degree in the same subject area was found to be broadly similar

    Indeed, there were suggestions that FYs may actually work out more expensive, given the need for more contact time and the tendency towards smaller classes. We should leave aside for the moment the great difficulties we have in understanding the cost of higher education provision more generally, and note that the evidence base for this particular decision is weak. And there is, to be clear, a huge absence of meaningful data about FYs more generally – something DfE itself attempted (after a fashion) to remedy with an ad hoc data release in October of 2023.

    Review of routes

    If you were wondering where the impetus for this policy intervention originally came from, you have to look back to Philip Augar’s review of post-18 fees and funding back in 2019:

    We recommend that student finance is no longer offered for foundation years, unless agreed with the OfS in exceptional cases.

    In broad-brush terms, his argument was that foundation years did a similar job to some level 3 qualifications (specifically the Access to HE Diplomas) at greater cost: he characterised this as “enticing” underqualified students onto expensive four year degrees that may not be in their best interests.

    It was one of many largely arbitrary (and mercifully forgotten) Augar recommendations on higher education funding, to the credit of the previous government it was very much more aligned to addressing the value offered to students. As Michelle Donelan said in 2022:

    We also know that there are some people who need a second chance, an opportunity to get into higher education through a less conventional route. Often this route is through foundation years, but we think it is unfair that some of those who take advantage of this transformational opportunity have to pay over the odds. So we are reducing the fee limit for foundation years to make them more accessible and more affordable for those who need a second chance.

    Quantity and quality

    Okay. So, ignoring Augar, there’s never been an agenda to cancel or limit the availability of foundation years. The cuts are based (albeit on some quite shaky data) on reducing costs for students while maintaining affordability for providers.

    There is, however, widely reckoned to be a quality issue with some FYs offered via franchise or partnership arrangement – something which DfE did not appear to have considered in collecting data or commissioning reports.

    With the 2025 recruitment cycle mostly over, we now have the ability to assess how the sector has responded to these interventions via the Unistats dataset.

    As I never tire of telling people, Unistats is not perfect but it is useful. The big headline story we’ve tracked in recent years is a reduction in the number of undergraduate courses on offer overall – down 6 per cent between 2023 and 2024, and down a further 3 per cent between 2024 and 2025.

    Foundation supply

    But underneath this we lost one in ten courses with compulsory foundation years (courses that must start with a foundation year) between 2023 and 2024, and a further five percent between 2024 and 2025. The latter year also saw nearly 6 per cent of optional foundation years (courses that can include a foundation year if required) disappear.

    [Full screen]

    What about franchise provision? Using a unistats proxy (does the registered UKPRN match the display UKPRN, or is there an additional UKPRN for a different teaching location) it appears that the number of franchised compulsory foundation years grew from 90 in 2023 to 107 in 2024. This trend reversed between 2024 and 2025 (with numbers falling back below 80), but the number of optional franchised foundation years fell off a cliff after 2023: from 53 in 2023 to just 12 in 2024, and 13 in 2025.

    At a (top level) subject area the dominance of social sciences and business foundation years has declined a little – engineering foundation years have always been popular and have broadly persisted over the three years in question (and are the most popular by far at Russell Group providers). Among franchised provision business and management still dominates, but the last three years has seen a rise in the number of creative and engineering foundation years offered (largely with specialised providers as franchisers).

    Policy outcomes and policy intentions

    So, it all depends on how you take the impetus of the government’s change in foundation year policy. If it was a measure to reduce overall the number of classroom (non-STEM) foundation years it has had some questionable success, likewise if you believe it was a policy designed to limit the spread of franchised foundation year degrees.

    It is possible that it has driven savings within universities – allowing foundation years to be run more cheaply. This might explain things like the paradoxical rise in franchised foundation years in creative arts alongside a drop in non-franchised provision – smaller and less historically encumbered (and potentially lower quality) providers may be better at running these foundation years at a lower overall cost.

    Here’s who is offering these courses – and what they are.

    [Full screen]

    This defaults to FY provision in 2025 but is – with a bit of effort, a fascinating tool for looking over the complete three years of courses advertised to undergraduates.

    As usual, we are hugely short of data – the fact that unistats (of all things) offers the best lens on what is happening suggests that there’s nobody in DfE with an eye on what is going on.

    But rumours of the demise of the classroom based foundation year, or even the franchise model in providing this, are likely to be overstated. It remains to be seen, by whatever measure, whether the cut-price offer is as good.

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  • Child Care Worker Detained by ICE Leaves a Community Reeling – The 74

    Child Care Worker Detained by ICE Leaves a Community Reeling – The 74


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    This story was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. 

    Two years ago, Nicolle Orozco Forero walked into an in-home day care in Seattle, Washington, looking for a job. She was barely 22, a whole five feet tall — if that. But she was calm, focused. Her presence struck the owner, Stephanie Wishon, because it’s not easy to find qualified staff who can work with children with disabilities.

    Orozco Forero had experience working with kids who had autism back in Colombia, so Wishon had her come in for a trial run and hired her after the first day. The children, who needed someone who had love and care to give in abundance, gravitated toward her. She was good at the hardest stuff. She changed diapers and outfits the moment they were soiled. She was vigilant; her kids stayed pristine. And she got them to do the things they wouldn’t do for other people, like say “ah” when it was time to get their teeth brushed or sit still long enough for her to twist a braid down their back.

    Some people just have that way about them.

    And people like Orozco Forero are exceptionally rare. Already, the staffing shortage in child care is near crisis levels. It’s far worse for children with disabilities — about a third of those families say they face significant difficulty finding care for their kids, partly because there are too few people with the ability, expertise or desire to work with their children. Immigrant women like Orozco Forero have been helping to fill that void. They now make up 20 percent of all child care workers.

    At home, Orozco Forero was also caring for her own young boys, one of whom started to show symptoms of a serious illness over the past two years that doctors have not yet been able to diagnose. She took some time off to care for him last year, before returning to the kids at Wishon’s day care.

    Her work has kept an already precarious safety net together. Without women like Orozco Forero, families who have nowhere else to turn for care have to make difficult decisions about how to survive and keep their children safe. Without her, the safety net snaps.

    And that’s exactly what happened on June 18, the day she was detained.

    It was supposed to be a routine meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Orozco Forero and her husband had been to all their monthly meetings for the past year and change, since their asylum charge was denied in April 2024.

    The family — Orozco Forero; her husband, Juan Sebastian Moreno Acosta; and their two sons, Juan David, 7, and Daniel, 5 — fled Colombia two years ago. Moreno Acosta, a street vendor, had been persecuted by gangs who target vendors for money.

    After arriving in the United States, they sought the help of a lawyer with their asylum claim, but when they couldn’t pay his full fee ahead of their hearing, he pulled out. They represented themselves in court and lost the case. With no knowledge of the U.S. court system, they didn’t know they had 30 days to appeal the ruling, either. Ever since, ICE has been monitoring them, requiring they wear a wrist tracker and meet with an immigration officer once a month, sometimes more, according to a family member. (The 19th is not naming the family member to protect their identity.) It’s unclear why ICE has allowed them to stay in the country all this time, though it’s not necessarily uncommon; ICE typically prioritized immigrants with felonies for deportation.

    Orozco Forero had seen the reports of illegal immigrants being rounded up at their immigration appointments. President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort has led to the detention of about 30,000 migrants with no criminal record, like Orozco Forero, who now make up about half of those detained. Her husband does have a misdemeanor reckless driving conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol on his record, but he completed a court-mandated alcohol course for that and has no other convictions.

    Still, Orozco Forero wasn’t worried when she headed to her appointment on the morning of June 18. If ICE planned to detain her, Orozco Forero thought, they would have asked her to come with the boys, right?

    And she had been doing everything right: She’d gone to all her appointments, taken documentation to show she was going to school at Green River Community College taking courses in English and early childhood education. She had completed a child care internship that trained her to open her own licensed in-home day care. Her licensure approval was set to arrive any moment, likely that same week, and the day care was just about ready to go.

    But that morning, her family was still wary, asking her to share her location just in case.

    Shortly after 10 a.m., Orozco Forero texted her family member: “They are going to deport us”

    “Nicolle what happened? Nicolle answer me,” they texted back. “What do I do?”

    “I can’t speak I feel like I’m going to faint,” Orozco Forero replied. And then: “I’m sorry it wasn’t what we expected.”

    Two-and-a-half hours west, on the coast of Washington in a town called Southbend, Wishon was frantic. Orozco Forero had texted her, too. ICE was asking for the boys.

    In two years, Wishon had grown incredibly close to Orozco Forero, who had cared for her own kids. After her family moved to the coast, Wishon rented out her house in Seattle to Orozco Forero, whose boys were excited to have a home with a yard.

    Wishon’s husband, Gabriel, hopped into his truck and headed to Seattle. Wishon, meanwhile, got on the phone with the Orozco Forero family’s ICE agent and every lawyer she could. They were going to take them into detention at a facility 2,200 miles away in Texas, a facility that was reopened earlier this year by the Trump administration to detain families. Wishon wanted to find a lawyer who could stop the deportation order, and she wanted to make sure the boys would be reunited with their parents if they took them to meet the ICE agent.

    Nicolle Orozco Forero’s sons play with a child their mother takes care of. (Stephanie Wishon)

    And that was especially important, not just because they were young children, but because Juan David is still sick.

    For the past year, he’s been seeking treatment at Seattle Children’s Hospital for an illness that is turning his urine muddy. So far, doctors have determined he’s losing red blood cells and protein through his urine, indicating a possible kidney issue, but they haven’t yet zeroed in on what is causing the problem. They likely need a kidney biopsy to be sure.

    “Given the complexity of his case, it is essential that Juan remain in the United States for continued testing and treatment,” his nephrologist Jordan Symons wrote in a March letter to ICE. “We kindly request that you consider this medical necessity in your review of his immigration status and grant him the ability to stay in the United States until his treatment and evaluation are completed.”

    Juan David’s care team has been monitoring him closely to ensure his red blood cell and protein levels never drop too low. His condition could become serious quickly.

    “You can die from that,” said Sarah Kasnick, a physician’s assistant who is familiar with his case. Kasnick is also a foster parent, and Orozco Forero provided care for her family.

    When Gabriel Wishon arrived to pick up the boys, they were confused and disoriented. Where were their parents? Why was everyone crying? They didn’t want to go to Colombia, they told him on the drive. They wanted to stay in the United States.

    Around 5:30 p.m. that evening, he met with the ICE agent, who had waited past her work hours for them to arrive.

    “Bye boys, you are going to see your parents right now. They are right inside,” Wishon told them. He watched them walk in carrying two stuffed animals, a Super Mario doll and Chase, the popular cartoon dog dressed as a police officer.

    The families Orozco Forero cares for are now in a free fall.

    Jessica Cocson, whose son has been in Orozco Forero’s care for more than a year, described her in a character letter to ICE as a “blessing to us in ways I struggle to fully express.”

    Orozco Forero and her husband “support working families, provide quality childcare, and demonstrate compassion and commitment every day,” Cocson wrote. “It is heartbreaking to think that someone who gives so much and asks so little could be forced to leave.”

    Tamia Riley, whose two sons with autism were also in Orozco Forero’s care, said losing her was like watching “a father walking out the door.”

    “These people, these day care providers, sitters, they are a form of family members for me and my children,” Riley said.

    Now, the day care she was set to open lays empty. Inside, the walls are plastered with posters listing colors and sight words. There are cushioned mats on the floor and play stations. Tables with tiny chairs. A tall pink dollhouse. High chairs and a pack and play for the babies. Outside, two play houses, a ball pit, toys to ride on and little picnic tables set across an artificial turf. But no children to enjoy any of it.

    Big Dreams Day Care she was going to call it, for the dreams she wanted the kids in her care to strive for, and the ones that were finally coming to fruition for her.

    Orozco Forero’s detention has rattled child care workers across the country. In Texas, workers represented by the Service Employees International Union have been rallying in her name. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, spoke in support of the family’s release at a rally on June 29 in San Antonio. And a group of union workers is attempting to deliver supplies to the family. It’s an effort Orozco Forero knows little about; she only has limited communication with those on the outside.

    Tricia Schroeder, the president of the Seattle-based SEIU chapter that represents care workers, said that, for years unions like hers have been working to improve quality, access and affordability in child care, a system in such deep crisis it’s been called by the Treasury Department “a textbook example of a broken market.”

    Immigrant women like Orozco Forero were part of that effort to improve access, doing jobs few Americans want to take on.

    “Detaining child care providers, especially those who care for kids with special needs, just deepens the crisis in early learning,” Schroeder said.

    A woman holds a baby in her lap.
    Nicolle Orozco Forero was going to community college for early childhood education and planned to open her own daycare before she was detained by ICE. (Stephanie Wishon)

    Orozco Forero was also the connective tissue that kept families employed. Her loss has rippled across industries.

    Kasnick, the foster parent, said one of the children in her care had been tentatively set to start at Orozco Forero’s day care as soon as it opened. Orozco Forero had been the only provider who would take the child, who has autism and is nonverbal.

    Orozco Forero had cared for the girl at Wishon’s day care as if she was her own, even taking her in once when the child’s care had fallen through and no foster family in the entire county would take her in because of the complexity of her needs. The girl arrived at Orozco Forero’s house at midnight on a weekend “with no clothing, toys, medication or any of her belongings … this did not [deter] Nicolle and Sebastian instead they immediately went and purchased all the things” the child needed, a social worker wrote in a letter to ICE. Kasnick said Orozco Forero was even considering becoming a foster parent.

    Without her, Kasnick is out of options: She quit her job as a physician’s assistant to care for the child after Orozco Forero was detained.

    “There are now 44 patients a day who don’t have anyone to provide their health care, and I can’t go to work because Nicolle’s day care didn’t open,” Kasnick said.

    In the weeks since, Kasnick has had an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, she said. How could this happen to someone who gave back so much?

    “The security of knowing that you can be in your home one day and in a prison the next week, and you didn’t do anything except exist?” she said. “It makes you feel like there’s no good left in the world.”

    Orozco Forero’s family has now been in ICE detention for nearly a month awaiting a bond hearing that could buy them time in the United States. Orozco Forero and the boys are together; her husband is in the same facility but separated from them.

    Juan David hasn’t been eating. It took three weeks for him to receive medical care, Orozco Forero told her attorney, James Costo.

    Costo has been working to get the details of why ICE allowed the family to stay in the country with monitoring after they lost their asylum case last year. There has been an order for their deportation since then, but ICE never attempted to deport them until the Trump administration ramped up efforts. The number of immigrants without criminal convictions who have been detained has doubled since May.

    The process to fight an asylum claim and appeal a denial is complicated — there are court deadlines, documents that need to be submitted and translated.

    “They think maybe they can do it themselves and go in and say what happened but they are not understanding the whole legal process,” Costo said. “The system isn’t made for things to be easy.”

    Costo is hopeful a judge will allow them to stay in the country temporarily as Juan David seeks care. They have almost no family left in Colombia, and no way to obtain care for him there, their family said. If they can stay, then perhaps Orozco Forero could try to obtain a work visa as a domestic worker.

    He has gathered letters of support from numerous people whose lives the Orozco Forero family touched, and Wishon set up a GoFundMe to cover her legal expenses.

    In the letters, Juan David’s first grade teachers call him an exceptional student who went from one of the lowest reading levels in the class — 10 words a minute — to one of the highest at 70 words a minute.

    “He shows the qualities of a model citizen at a young age — dependable, ethical, and hard-working,” wrote his teacher, Carla Trujillo.

    They were all on their way to shaping a better future, Wishon wrote in hers. The couple “worked tirelessly to build a better life for their children and to open their own licensed child care business. In all my years of employing and mentoring caregivers, I have rarely met a couple as responsible, driven, and capable as Nicolle and Sebastian.”

    “This family is not a threat,” she concluded. “They are an asset.”


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  • Lauren Greenfield’s “Social Studies” & Coming of Age in a Social Media World (Daily Show)

    Lauren Greenfield’s “Social Studies” & Coming of Age in a Social Media World (Daily Show)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Lauren Greenfield’s “Social Studies” & Coming of Age in a Social Media World (Daily Show)




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  • Trump Versus Academia Update (Bryan Alexander)

    Trump Versus Academia Update (Bryan Alexander)

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  • More Muckraking Ahead

    More Muckraking Ahead

     

    At the Higher Education Inquirer, we see through the spin. We’ll keep digging, exposing the absurdity, and telling the stories no one else will.  More muckraking ahead. Stay tuned.

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  • American Higher Education and the Debt Trap

    American Higher Education and the Debt Trap

    They call it a “path to opportunity,” but for millions of students and their families, American higher education is just Flirtin’ with Disaster—a gamble with long odds and staggering costs. Borrowers bet their future on a credential, universities gamble with public trust and private equity, and the system as a whole plays chicken with economic and social collapse. Cue the screeching guitar of Molly Hatchet’s 1979 Southern rock anthem, and you’ve got a fitting soundtrack to the dangerous dance between institutions of higher ed and the consumers they so aggressively court.

    The Student as Collateral

    For the last three decades, higher education in the United States has increasingly behaved like a high-stakes poker table, only it’s the students who are holding a weak hand. Underfunded public colleges, predatory for-profits, and tuition-hiking private universities all promise upward mobility but deliver it only selectively. The rest? They leave the table with debt, no degree, or both.

    Colleges market dreams, but they sell debt. Americans now owe more than $1.7 trillion in student loans. And while some elite schools can claim robust return-on-investment, most institutions below the top tiers produce increasingly shaky value propositions—especially for working-class, first-gen, and BIPOC students. For them, education is often less an elevator to the middle class than a trapdoor into a lifetime of wage garnishment and diminished credit.

    Institutional Recklessness

    Universities themselves are no saints in this drama. Fueled by financial aid dollars, college leaders have expanded campuses like land barons—building luxury dorms, bloated athletic programs, and administrative empires. Meanwhile, instruction is increasingly outsourced to underpaid adjuncts, and actual student support systems are skeletal at best.

    The recklessness isn’t limited to for-profits like Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, and the Art Institutes, all of which collapsed under federal scrutiny. Even brand-name nonprofits—think USC, NYU, Columbia—have been exposed for enrolling students into costly, often ineffective online master’s programs in partnership with edtech firms. The real product wasn’t the degree—it was the debt.

    A Nation at the Brink

    From community colleges to research universities, institutions are now being pushed to their financial and ethical limits. The number of colleges closing or merging has skyrocketed, especially among small private colleges and rural campuses. Layoffs, like those at Southern New Hampshire University and across public systems in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and West Virginia, show that austerity is the new norm.

    But the real disaster is systemic. The American college promise—that hard work and higher ed will lead to security—is unraveling in real time. With declining enrollments, aging infrastructure, and increasing political pressure to defund or control curriculum, many schools are shifting from public goods to privatized risk centers. Even state flagship universities now behave more like hedge funds than educational institutions.

    Consumers or Victims?

    One of the cruelest ironies is that students are still told they are “consumers” who should “shop wisely.” But education is not like buying a toaster. There’s no refund if your college closes. There’s no protection if your degree is devalued. And there’s no bankruptcy for most student loan debt. Even federal forgiveness efforts—like Borrower Defense or Public Service Loan Forgiveness—are riddled with bureaucratic landmines and political sabotage.

    In this asymmetric market, the house almost always wins. Institutions keep the revenue. Third-party contractors keep their profits. Politicians collect campaign checks. And the borrowers? They’re left flirtin’ with disaster, hoping the system doesn’t collapse before they’ve paid off the last dime.

    No Exit Without Accountability

    There’s still time to change course—but it will require radical rethinking. That means:

    • Holding institutions and executives accountable for false advertising and financial harm.

    • Reining in tuition hikes and decoupling higher ed from Wall Street’s expectations.

    • Fully funding community colleges and public universities to serve as real social infrastructure.

    • Expanding debt cancellation—not just piecemeal forgiveness—for those most harmed by a failed system.

    • Ending the exploitation of adjunct labor and restoring the academic mission.

    Otherwise, higher education in the U.S. will continue on its reckless path, a broken-down system blasting its anthem of denial as it speeds toward the edge.

    As the song goes:

    “I’m travelin’ down the road and I’m flirtin’ with disaster… I got the pedal to the floor, my life is runnin’ faster.”

    So is the American student debt machine—and we’re all strapped in for the ride.

    Sources:

    • U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Portfolio

    • “The Trillion Dollar Lie,” Student Borrower Protection Center

    • The Century Foundation, “The High Cost of For-Profit Colleges”

    • Inside Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Education, Higher Ed Dive

    • National Center for Education Statistics

    • Molly Hatchet, Flirtin’ with Disaster, Epic Records, 1979

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  • Despite Reservations, Florida BOG Approves New Accreditor

    Despite Reservations, Florida BOG Approves New Accreditor

    Plans for a new accreditor, announced by Florida governor Ron DeSantis in June, are becoming a reality.

    The Florida Board of Governors voted Friday afternoon to create a controversial new accrediting agency, in coordination with five other state university systems. The decision came after about an hour of heated discussion between board members and the State University System of Florida’s chancellor regarding details of the plan.

    Chancellor Raymond Rodriguez argued that the new accreditor, called the Commission for Public Higher Education, would eliminate the bureaucracy that comes with existing accrediting agencies and focus specifically on the needs of public universities.

    “The Commission for Public Higher Education will offer an accreditation model that prioritizes academic excellence and student success while removing ideological bias and unnecessary financial burdens,” he said. “Through the CPHE, public colleges and universities across the country will have access to an accreditation process that is focused on quality, rooted in accountability and committed to continuous improvement.”

    But before voting in favor of the motion, board members repeatedly pushed back, arguing that the plans for starting an accreditor from scratch were half-baked. They raised a litany of questions about how the CPHE would work in practice.

    Some wanted to hash out the details of the would-be accreditor’s governance structure before voting. According to the CPHE business plan, the Florida governing board would incorporate the accreditor as a nonprofit in Florida and serve as its initial sole member, using a $4 million appropriation from the Florida Legislature for start-up costs. (Other systems are expected to put in similar amounts.) A board of directors, appointed by all the university systems, would be responsible for accrediting decisions and policies.

    But multiple BOG members worried that the roles of the governing board and board of directors were not clearly delineated.

    “With us as the sole member, it appears, or could appear, to stakeholders that the accreditor lacks independence from the institution being accredited,” said board member Kimberly Dunn.

    Alan Levine, vice chair of the Board of Governors, called for a clear “proverbial corporate veil” between the two in corporate documents.

    “Our role is not to govern or direct the activities of this body,” Levine said of CPHE. “It has to be independent or it won’t even be approvable by the Department of Education.”

    Board member Ken Jones pressed for greater detail on the governing board’s “fiduciary or governance obligation to this new entity.”

    “I’m in support of this … I really believe this is the right path,” he said. “I just want to be sure that we all go in, eyes wide-open, understanding what is our responsibility as a BOG? … We’re breaking new ground here, and we’re doing it for the right reasons. But I want to be sure that when the questions come—and I’m sure they certainly will—that we’ve got the right answers.”

    Members asked questions about the accreditor’s future cybersecurity and IT infrastructure, as well as its associated costs. Some asked whether accreditors have direct access to universities’ data systems and raised concerns about potential hacking and the board’s liability; they were given reassurance that colleges themselves report their data. Some board members also asked for budget projections of what CPHE would cost.

    “I have an internal, unofficial estimation around the funds and revenues, but nothing I’d be prepared and comfortable to put forward publicly,” said Rachel Kamoutsas, the system’s chief of staff and corporate secretary, who fielded questions about the initiative.

    The answers didn’t seem to fully satisfy the governing board.

    “I do think the chancellor and team have a lot of work to do to continue to educate this board, to be blunt,” said BOG chair Brian Lamb, “because a lot of the questions that we’re asking—forecast, IT, infrastructure, staffing—every last one of those are appropriate.”

    He emphasized to other board members, however, that voting in favor of the motion would jump-start the process of incorporating the new accreditor and provide seed money for it. But, he added, “not a penny is going anywhere until we have an agreed-upon document on how this money will be spent.”

    Accreditation expert Paul Gaston III, an emeritus trustees professor at Kent State University, raised similar questions in an interview with Inside Higher Ed.

    “The credibility of accreditation really is directly related to whether the public can accept it is an authoritative source of objective evaluation that is in the public interest,” he said. “And the question that I would ask as a member of the public is, how will an accreditor that is created by and that is answerable to the institutions being evaluated achieve that credibility?”

    Despite all the pushback, the BOG ultimately voted unanimously to approve the measure. Now CPHE can file for incorporation, establish its Board of Directors and set out on the multiyear process of securing recognition from the Department of Education.

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  • A 20-Year Reflection on Transparency and the Illusion of Access (Glen McGhee)

    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

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  • School districts grapple with ‘budgetary chaos’ in wake of federal funding freeze

    School districts grapple with ‘budgetary chaos’ in wake of federal funding freeze

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    The U.S. Department of Education’s withholding of $6.2 billion in federal K-12 grants has local and state school systems scrambling to figure out how to make up for the budget shortages. It has also caused a swell of advocacy from families, lawmakers, educators and others across the nation.

    The withheld funds for fiscal year 2025 were expected to be released by the Education Department July 1. Programs at risk due to the funding hold include English learner services, academic supports, after-school programming and professional development. 

    The frozen funds represent at least 10% or more of states’ overall K-12 federal revenues if the money is not distributed, according to the nonpartisan Learning Policy Institute.

    At the local level, superintendents and principals are voicing concern about how the funding freeze will impact their school services, particularly those that serve English learners, homeless students and students from low-income families. 

    Chase Christensen, principal and superintendent of the 80-student Sheridan County School District #3 in rural Clearmont, Wyoming, said his district was expecting $30,000 in Title II and IV funding that is being withheld. 

    The district had nearly finalized its roughly $4 million budget for the upcoming school year when it learned of the federal funding freeze. It then adjusted the budget to remove those federal funds and is making up the difference by leaving a staffing position vacant.

    Although the budget adjustment means student services under those title programs can continue, Christensen said “every dollar of federal funding for education is impactful” at the individual student level.

    “When these funds are pulled, especially this late in the game for budget planning and everything else, students are going to be the ones that lose out,” Christensen said.

    Nationally, bigger districts have the largest funding gaps, according to a New America analysis of data from 46 states that had available funding figures. Those districts include Los Angeles Unified School District ($82 million), Florida’s Dade County School District ($38 million), and Nevada’s Clark County School District ($22 million).

    Advocacy groups and policymakers are calling on the Trump administration to restore the funds. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America, a nonprofit that supports afterschool programs, said the impact of the blocked funds will be “swift and devastating,” in a statement from President and CEO Jim Clark. 

    Clark said 926 Boys and Girls Clubs across the country could close, and 5,900 jobs would be lost if the funding is not released. “Afterschool and summer learning programs are cornerstones of academic success, public safety, and family stability for millions of young people — but right now, we stand at a dangerous tipping point,” Clark said. 

    The National English Learner Roundtable, a coalition of more than a dozen national and state-based organizations supportive of English learner services, said in a Thursday statement, “This unprecedented move by the Department has blindsided schools that have always been able to rely on these funds to support the start of the school year, and has created budgetary chaos for nearly every K-12 school district.” 

    On Thursday, 150 Democratic House lawmakers sent a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought demanding the title funds be released.

    “This late-breaking decision, which provided no timeline for which states can expect a final decision, is leaving states financially vulnerable and forcing many to make last minute decisions about how to proceed with K12 education in this upcoming school year,” the letter said.

    The funding hold has already led to staff layoffs, program delays and cancellations of services, the House members said.

    Spending under review

    The withheld funds were appropriated by Congress and approved by President Donald Trump earlier this year. States expected to gain access to the monies starting July 1, as routine. But the day before, on June 30, the Education Department told grantees not to expect the funds while it conducts a review and referred questions to OMB.

    The specific grant funding being withheld includes:

    • Title II-A for professional development: $2.2 billion.
    • Title IV-A for student support and academic enrichment: $1.4 billion.
    • Title IV-B for 21st Century Community Learning Centers: $1.3 billion.
    • Title III-A for English-learner services: $890 million.
    • Title I-C for migrant education: $375 million.

    On Thursday, in a statement to K-12 Dive, OMB said no funding decisions have been made and that it is conducting a “programmatic review of education funding.”

    The office also said, “initial findings show that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”

    OMB and the Education Department have not indicated a timeframe for the review of the frozen federal funds.

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  • The Platform Monopoly on Jobs and Careers

    The Platform Monopoly on Jobs and Careers

    In the platform-dominated economy, Indeed.com has established itself as the central marketplace for jobseekers and employers alike, boasting tens of millions of listings across industries and geographies. But behind its user-friendly design lies a powerful, opaque system that reinforces labor precarity, exploits the desperation of the underemployed, and facilitates fraud and exploitation—including through job scams designed to funnel people into for-profit colleges and dubious training schemes.

    Indeed’s rise is emblematic of a larger pattern in the U.S. political economy, where platforms extract profit from human need—especially from the millions of Americans struggling to find secure employment in a shrinking labor market. While claiming to connect jobseekers with opportunity, Indeed increasingly operates as a gatekeeper and a filter, favoring employers with the ability to pay for prominence, and quietly profiting from a user base navigating worsening inequality.

    From Opportunity to Exploitation: The Platform Economy

    Indeed’s near-monopoly over online job listings positions it as the Amazon of employment—a central aggregator of job ads, resume submissions, employer reviews, and workforce data. Its business model is rooted in ad-based revenue: companies pay to boost job visibility, while jobseekers receive a flood of suggested listings—many of which are irrelevant, low-quality, or outright deceptive.

    One particularly disturbing trend: a growing number of “job postings” on Indeed are not job offers at all, but veiled advertisements for for-profit colleges and unaccredited training programs. These listings typically appear legitimate, bearing the titles of medical assistant, phlebotomist, cybersecurity technician, or paralegal. But once an applicant shows interest, they are quickly routed to admissions representatives, not employers. In short, they’ve fallen for a bait-and-switch scheme.

    Indeed does little to prevent these tactics. Despite flagging mechanisms and user complaints, scammers and aggressive recruiters return repeatedly under new listings or shell company names. And because these advertisers pay to promote their listings, there is a built-in conflict of interest: Indeed profits from ads designed to exploit vulnerable jobseekers, many of whom are already burdened by unemployment, underemployment, or student debt.

    The Job Training Charade: A National Problem

    As labor economist Gordon Lafer argues in The Job Training Charade, job training programs have long functioned as a public relations tool for elected officials, who promise “skills-based solutions” rather than structural labor reform. Publicly funded retraining programs and for-profit career schools capitalize on this narrative, convincing jobseekers that their struggles stem from a personal “skills gap” rather than systemic inequality.

    Indeed’s platform reinforces this logic by flooding users with listings that promote training and certification programs as prerequisites for jobs that often don’t exist or pay poorly. Even in legitimate industries—like healthcare and IT—the overabundance of credential inflation and unnecessary gatekeeping leads to further debt accumulation without guaranteeing meaningful work.

    As Lafer writes, “Training has become a substitute for economic policy—a way of appearing to do something without actually improving people’s lives.” And Indeed is a willing partner in this substitution, profiting from a constant churn of dislocated workers trying to retool their résumés and lives to meet an ever-shifting set of employer demands.

    The Educated Underclass and Platform Paternalism

    Gary Roth, in The Educated Underclass, identifies another critical aspect of this ecosystem: the overproduction of college graduates relative to the needs of the labor market. As more people earn degrees, the wage premium diminishes, and once-secure professions become crowded with overqualified applicants chasing scarce opportunities.

    Indeed’s platform becomes the proving ground for this underclass: college-educated workers competing for service jobs, temp contracts, or entry-level roles barely above minimum wage. Meanwhile, the site’s tools—resume scores, AI-based job match algorithms, and automated rejection letters—reinforce the idea that unemployment is a personal failure rather than a structural outcome.

    This is platform paternalism at its worst. Jobseekers are “nudged” into applying for low-quality work, “encouraged” to pursue unnecessary training, and surveilled through behavioral data that is packaged and sold to employers and third-party marketers. Career development becomes not a public good but a private product—sold back to workers in pieces, with no guarantee of outcome.

    Job Scams and Regulatory Blind Spots

    The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general have received thousands of complaints about online job scams—including fake recruiters, phony employers, and misleading school advertisements. Yet enforcement remains weak, and platforms like Indeed enjoy limited legal liability, protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields them from responsibility for user-generated content.

    Even when caught, fraudulent advertisers often reappear. As one whistleblower told The Higher Education Inquirer, “We’d flag scam listings, and two days later they’d pop back up under a new name. It was like a game of whack-a-mole—and no one at the top cared.”

    Indeed’s user agreement explicitly disclaims responsibility for the authenticity of job listings. And although the company has instituted basic verification and reporting tools, they are inadequate to stem the tide of predatory postings, especially those tied to the multibillion-dollar for-profit education industry.

    A Broken System Masquerading as Innovation

    The consolidation of online job markets under platforms like Indeed represents a profound shift in the political economy of labor. No longer mediated by public institutions or strong unions, the search for work is now a privatized experience, managed by algorithms, monetized through ads, and vulnerable to deception.

    To be clear: Indeed does not create jobs. It creates the illusion of access. It obscures labor precarity behind UX design and paid listings. It enables fraudulent training pipelines while pushing the burden of risk and cost onto workers. And it profits from the widening chasm between what higher education promises and what the economy delivers.

    At The Higher Education Inquirer, we demand accountability—not just from institutions of higher learning but from the platforms that now mediate our futures. The illusion must be pierced, and jobseeking must be reclaimed as a public function, free from predation, profiteering, and platform capture.

    Sources:

    • Lafer, Gordon. The Job Training Charade. Cornell University Press, 2002.

    • Roth, Gary. The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility. Pluto Press, 2019.

    • U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). “Job Scams: What You Need to Know.” 2024.

    • Recruit Holdings. Annual Reports and Investor Presentations, 2020–2024.

    • U.S. Department of Labor. “Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements.” 2023.

    • Brody, Leslie. “Students Lured Into For-Profit Colleges Through Fake Job Ads.” Wall Street Journal, 2022.

    • Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019.

    • Glassdoor, Indeed, and CareerBuilder community complaint forums (2021–2025).

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