First-year students often experience isolation, uncertainty, and identity formation. Groypers prey on this transitional moment by offering belonging, brotherhood, and contrarian confidence.
2. Political Vacuum As universities retreat from serious civic education and as student affairs offices shrink under austerity, space opens for fringe networks to fill the ideological void.
3. Online Radicalization Pipelines Groypers thrive in places like:
Campus life becomes an extension of these networks, where online provocations evolve into real-world harassment or orchestrated spectacle.
4. Conservative Student Groups as Entry Points Mainstream Republican or “free speech” groups are often targeted for infiltration. Groypers show up: to push Q&A sessions into racist or antisemitic talking points, to pressure student Republicans to shift further right, to create rifts between libertarian, traditional conservative, and MAGA factions.
The strategy is division, not dialogue.
Common Groyper Tactics on Campus 1. Ambush Questioning At public lectures or campus Republican events, Groypers coordinate to dominate Q&A sessions, posing racially charged or conspiratorial questions designed to go viral.
2. Online Harassment and Dogpiling Students—often women, LGBTQ+ students, or activists—find themselves targeted with:
brigade attacks, doxxing attempts, edited clips taken out of context, swarm-like intimidation.
3. Misery Farming Groypers intentionally provoke negative reactions to harvest “proof” that campuses are hostile to conservatives. This content is then fed into national media pipelines.
4. Grooming and Recruitment They seek out students who feel: lonely unsupported resentful ideologically adrift economically anxious
A mix of dark humor, contrarian bravado, and “insider knowledge” becomes the grooming pathway.
The Institutional Problem: Campuses Are Not Prepared Universities often misread these actors as: “just trolls,” “rowdy conservatives,” “free speech activists.”
They’re not.
Groypers are engaged in ideological recruitment and targeted harassment that can escalate into threats, coordinated disruption, and offline violence. Yet institutions remain slow to respond because: they lack digital literacy, they fear backlash from right-wing media, they outsource security and student affairs to PR firms, administrators underestimate decentralized extremist networks.
Faculty—especially contingent or early-career academics—often feel unsupported or intimidated.
How Groypers Fit into the Larger Campus Crisis The Groypers’ rise exposes deeper fractures: neoliberal hollowing of the university growing distrust in democratic institutions political polarization fueled by billionaire-backed media the decline of genuine civic education surveillance capitalism and algorithmic radicalization
Campuses have become battlegrounds—not by accident, but because they sit at the intersection of youth, identity, technology, and national politics.
What Higher Education Must Do Now Universities need to respond with clarity, not panic, and with structural solutions, not symbolic statements.
1. Treat Digital Extremism as Part of Student Safety This means training staff, hiring specialists, and supporting targets of online harassment.
2. Reinvest in Human Infrastructure Student Affairs, counseling centers, and campus journalism must be strengthened—not cut or replaced with outsourcing contracts.
3. Support Independent Investigative Student Journalism Student reporters are often the first to detect radicalization trends—but only if their newsrooms are funded and protected.
4. Protect Academic Freedom Without Ceding Ground to Harassment “Free speech” cannot be a shield for sustained intimidation campaigns.
5. Strengthen Civic Education Rooted in Truth and Inclusion The real antidote to extremism is not censorship—it’s meaningful democratic literacy.
Seeing the Threat Clearly Groypers are not the dominant force on campus. Most students reject their worldview. But they are a growing presence within a broader crisis where U.S. higher education lacks the stability, funding, and courage to defend its mission.
The real danger is not the meme or the mascot—it’s the vacuum that allows extremist networks to flourish.
The Higher Education Inquirer will continue monitoring this issue as the 2026 and 2028 election cycles approach, when radical groups often intensify campus recruitment and provocation.
Mass surveillance is no longer a marginal concern in American life. It is the silent architecture of a society managed from above and distrusted from below. The cameras aimed at students, workers, and the precarious class reflect a deeper spiritual, political, and moral crisis among the elites who designed the systems now monitoring the rest of us.
Universities, corporations, city governments, and federal agencies increasingly rely on surveillance tools to manage populations whose economic security has been gutted by the same leaders who now demand behavioral compliance. Cameras proliferate, keystrokes are tracked, movement is logged, and predictive algorithms follow people across campuses, workplaces, and public spaces. Yet those responsible for creating the conditions that justify surveillance—politicians, corporate boards, university trustees, executive donors, and policy consultants—operate in near total opacity. Their meetings take place behind closed doors, their decisions shielded from public scrutiny, their influence networks essentially invisible.
This is not a coincidence. It is the logical extension of a neoliberal elite culture that elevates market logic above moral obligation. As the Higher Education Inquirer documented in “How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis,” the architects of modern austerity—professionalized, credentialed, and trained in elite universities—constructed social systems that demand accountability from the poor while providing impunity for the powerful. Their policy models treat human beings as units to be managed, scored, nudged, and surveilled. Surveillance fits seamlessly into this worldview. It is the managerial substitute for solidarity.
The moral void of this elite class is perhaps most visible in the realm of healthcare. The Affordable Care Act, whatever its limitations, represented a modest attempt to affirm that healthcare is a public good and that access should not depend entirely on wealth. But the undermining of Obamacare under Donald Trump laid bare how deeply the nation’s policy culture had descended into nihilism. Trump’s efforts to gut the ACA were not about ideology or fiscal prudence; they were an expression of power for its own sake. Funding for enrollment outreach was slashed. Navigator programs were dismantled. Work requirements for Medicaid were encouraged, despite overwhelming evidence that they punished the sick and disabled. The administration promoted junk insurance plans that offered no real protection, while lawsuits were advanced to overturn the ACA entirely, even if doing so meant millions would lose coverage.
This assault revealed the moral collapse of a political and economic elite that had grown comfortable with cruelty. It was cruelty performed as policy, sanctioned by corporate donors, embraced by right-wing media, and tolerated by the broader professional class that rarely speaks out unless its own interests are threatened. Even many of the centrist neoliberal policymakers who originally shaped the ACA’s cost-sharing structure responded with timidity, reluctant to confront the underlying truth: that the American healthcare system had become an arena where profit mattered more than survival, and where surveillance of the poor replaced accountability for the rich.
As traditional moral frameworks lose their authority—whether organized religion, civic duty, or shared ethical narratives—many Americans have drifted into agnosticism or atheism not enriched by humanist values, but hollowed out by a sense of futility. Without a shared moral anchor, people retreat into private meaning or abandon meaning altogether. In this void, conspiracy theories flourish. People know they are lied to. They sense power operating behind closed doors. They see elite institutions fail repeatedly without consequence. When institutions offer no transparency, alternatives emerge in the shadows.
The elite response is predictable: condemn conspiracies, scold the public for irrationality, invoke the language of “misinformation.” But this reaction deepens the divide. The same elites who created opaque systems—financial, academic, political, and technological—now fault ordinary people for trying to make sense of the opacity. In a society where truth is managed, measured, branded, and optimized, conspiracy becomes a form of folk epistemology. It is not always correct, but it is often understandable.
Mass surveillance is therefore not the root of the crisis but its mirror. It reflects a ruling class that no longer commands moral authority and a public that no longer trusts the institutions governing it. It reflects a society that treats the vulnerable as suspects and the powerful as untouchable. It reflects a political order in which the dismantling of healthcare protections is permissible while the monitoring of poor people’s bodies, behaviors, and spending is normalized.
If the United States is to escape this downward spiral, the cameras must eventually be turned upward. Transparency must apply not only to individuals but to corporations, boards, agencies, foundations, and the political donors who shape public life. Higher education must cease functioning as a credentialing arm of elite impunity and reclaim its role as a defender of democratic inquiry and human dignity. Public institutions must anchor themselves in ethical commitments that do not depend on religious dogma but arise from the basic principle that every human being deserves respect, security, and care.
Until that reconstruction begins, the nation will remain trapped. The elites will continue to rule through metrics and surveillance rather than legitimacy. The public will continue to oscillate between nihilism and suspicion. And the moral void at the center of American life will continue to widen, one camera at a time.
Sources
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
David Lyon, Surveillance Studies
Higher Education Inquirer, How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis
Since the fallout of Occupy Wall Street in 2011, a small but persistent movement has sought to expose the widening inequities and systemic failures in U.S. higher education. We have agitated, analyzed, and educated, warning that the “market-driven” model championed by elite managers—presidents, trustees, CFOs, and state policymakers—would erode both academic quality and access. Today, that warning has become reality.
The College Meltdown is not a metaphor. It is a literal unraveling of an ecosystem where public support has eroded, tuition has skyrocketed, and students are left with crushing debt. Colleges are shuttering campuses, programs are disappearing, and adjuncts—already the backbone of instruction—face insecure employment. Meanwhile, neoliberal administrators, entrusted with guiding institutions through turbulence, have mostly engaged in cosmetic pruning rather than systemic reform.
This is not accidental. The managerial class in higher education—driven less by pedagogy than by budgets, branding, and financialization—has embraced austerity measures that protect elite interests while passing costs to students and staff. Endowment growth, athletics spending, and executive compensation often take priority over the academic mission. HBCUs and tribal colleges, already underfunded, bear the brunt of this mismanagement.
Efforts to stabilize the system have been tepid at best. Proposals for meaningful structural reform, from debt relief to state reinvestment, are watered down by political and market pressures. Neoliberals tout efficiency and innovation, yet rarely address the underlying moral crisis: the deliberate prioritization of profit over learning, and the failure to cultivate a socially responsible citizenry.
Our own engagement, since 2011, has aimed to shine light on these contradictions. We have chronicled how policies favoring privatization, corporate partnerships, and debt-financed tuition have created conditions ripe for collapse. We have amplified voices of students and faculty navigating these pressures. And we have challenged complacency in the academy, insisting that higher education be measured not just by financial metrics but by its capacity to educate, empower, and expand human potential.
“Pruning in Chernobyl” captures the essence of this moment: managerial actors trimming the edges while radioactive structural failures spread unchecked. Unless institutions confront the root causes—inequality, extractive financial models, and an erosion of public purpose—the meltdown will deepen. Our work remains to educate the public, hold decision-makers accountable, and imagine a higher education system that nurtures learning rather than merely managing decline.
To remember SNCC and CORE is to remember a democracy built not by elites but by everyday people—students, sharecroppers, domestic workers, bus drivers, teachers, and the poor and working class across the Jim Crow South and the segregated North. It is to remember Ella Baker’s wisdom, Diane Nash’s determination, Bob Moses’s quiet power, Fannie Lou Hamer’s moral force, James Farmer’s strategic brilliance—and also the thousands of unnamed organizers who risked everything without ever appearing in a textbook, a documentary, or a university lecture hall. Their names may not be widely known, but their work forms the backbone of the freedom struggle.
SNCC and CORE were never celebrity movements. They were people-powered, grassroots engines of democracy. They were built by individuals who knocked on doors in rural counties where Black voter registration hovered near zero; who faced armed sheriffs, Klan mobs, and white citizens’ councils; who farmed during the day and attended movement meetings at night; who ferried activists to safe houses; who housed Freedom Riders despite threats of arson and lynching; who cooked for mass meetings; who walked into county courthouses where their presence alone was an act of political defiance. These unnamed contributors shaped history as much as the well-known leaders, and their invisibility in public memory is itself a measure of how selectively the United States remembers the struggle for justice.
Ella Baker insisted from the beginning that the movement’s strength rested in ordinary people discovering their own power. That is why she pushed for “group-centered leadership,” refusing the myth that liberation depends on a single, heroic figure. Her practice of listening deeply—and her belief that the least recognized people held the deepest wisdom—permeated SNCC’s organizing culture. It is a challenge to institutions today, especially universities that still cling to hierarchical models of governance and expertise.
CORE’s early commitment to interracial, nonviolent direct action emerged from a similar belief in collective action. Its activists—people like James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, and George Houser—helped introduce the tactics that would soon reverberate across the nation: sit-ins, freedom rides, boycotts, and jail-ins. CORE’s work in northern cities also exposed the hypocrisy of institutions—including universities—that claimed moral high ground while upholding segregation in housing, employment, and policing.
SNCC’s field secretaries—Charles McDew, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, Prathia Hall, Sam Block, and so many others—did work that higher education still struggles to fully comprehend. Their organizing went far beyond protest; it involved listening to community elders, teaching literacy classes, building independent political organizations, challenging disenfranchisement at every level, and nurturing local leadership. Behind each of those actions were dozens of unnamed individuals who opened their homes, shared their limited resources, and stood guard against retaliation.
Remembering the unnamed is not sentimental. It is foundational. The freedom struggle was sustained by people whose names were never printed, whose stories never made the evening news, and whose families bore the consequences. Many were fired from their jobs, evicted from their homes, or harassed by police. Some disappeared from public life after the movement years, carrying trauma with little public recognition or support. Their sacrifices made the Civil Rights Movement possible, and higher education owes them a debt it has never acknowledged.
Today’s universities still wrestle with the structures the movement confronted: racialized inequality, policing, surveillance, donor influence, and hierarchical authority. Many of the same dynamics SNCC and CORE challenged—white paternalism, economic exploitation, authoritarian governance—are alive in campus politics and in the broader “college meltdown,” where austerity, privatization, and predatory actors erode public trust and opportunity.
To honor SNCC, CORE, and the thousands of unnamed organizers is to affirm that democracy emerges from the ground up. It means recognizing that real change requires more than symbolic gestures or PR-friendly “initiatives.” It demands revisiting Ella Baker’s core insight: strong people do not need strong leaders—they need structures that cultivate collective power.
Remembering them means acknowledging that the freedoms we now take for granted—voting rights, desegregation, access to education—were won not by institutions, but by people who challenged institutions. And it means seeing the present clearly: that grassroots organizing, from campus movements to community struggles, remains essential to confronting the crises of inequality, debt, climate, surveillance, and governance that define our era.
To remember SNCC and CORE is to remember not just the famous, but the countless unnamed: the hosts, the watchers, the singers, the marchers, the jailmates, the caretakers, the strategists, the frightened but determined teenagers, the elders who said “yes,” and the ones who insisted that freedom was worth the risk. Their legacy is the true measure of democracy—and a guide for what higher education must become if it is to serve justice rather than power.
Sources
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s.
Thomas F. Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice.
Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.
James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement.
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years.
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.
Danielle L. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street.
Across the United States, a quiet but unmistakable chill has settled over many college campuses. It isn’t the weather. It’s the behavior of a particular class of leaders—the college presidents whose decisions, priorities, and public personas have begun to feel, for lack of a better word, creepy. Not criminal, necessarily. Not always abusive in the legal sense. Just profoundly unsettling in ways that undermine trust, erode shared governance, and push higher education further into the shadows of authoritarianism and corporate capture.
This piece introduces criteria for what makes a college president “creepy,” highlights examples of the types of leaders who fit the mold, and invites reader feedback to build a more accountable public record.
Criteria for a “Creepy” College President
“Creepy” here is not about personality quirks. It’s about behavior, power, and material consequences. Based on the reporting and analysis at HEI, we propose the following criteria:
1. First Amendment Hostility
Presidents who suppress speech, restrict student journalism, punish dissent, or hide behind overbroad “time, place, and manner” rules fall squarely into this category. The creepiness intensifies when universities hire outside PR firms or surveillance contractors to monitor campus critics, including students and faculty.
2. Student Rights Violations
Presidents who treat students as risks rather than people, who hide data on assaults, who enable over-policing by campus security, or who weaponize conduct codes to silence protest movements—from Palestine solidarity groups to climate activists—fit the profile.
3. Civil Rights Erosion
Administrators who undermine Title IX protections, retaliate against whistleblowers, protect abusive coaches, or ignore discrimination complaints are not just negligent—they’re institutionally creepy. Their public statements about “inclusion” often ring hollow when compared with their actions behind closed doors.
4. Worker Rights Suppression
Union busting. Outsourcing. Wage stagnation. Anti-transparency tactics. Presidents who preach community while crushing collective bargaining efforts, freezing staff pay, or firing outspoken employees through “restructuring” deserve a place on any such list.
5. Climate Denial or Delay
Presidents who sign glossy climate pledges yet continue fossil-fuel investments, partner with extractive corporations, or suppress environmental activism on campus epitomize a uniquely twenty-first-century creepiness: a willingness to sacrifice future generations to maintain donor relationships and boardroom comfort.
Examples: The Multi-Modal Creep Typology
Rather than name only individuals—something readers can help expand—we outline several recognizable types. These composites reflect the emerging patterns seen across U.S. higher education.
The Surveillance Chancellor
Obsessed with “campus safety,” this president quietly expands the university’s security apparatus: license plate readers at entrances, contracts with predictive-policing vendors, facial recognition “pilots,” and backdoor relationships with state or federal agencies. Their speeches emphasize “community,” but their emails say “monitoring.”
The Union-Busting Visionary
This leader talks the language of innovation and social mobility while hiring anti-union law firms to intimidate graduate workers and dining staff. Their glossy strategic plans promise “belonging,” but their HR memos rewrite job classifications to avoid paying benefits.
The Donor-Driven Speech Regulator
Terrified of upsetting trustees, corporate sponsors, or wealthy alumni, this president cracks down on student protests, bans certain speakers, or manipulates disciplinary procedures to neutralize campus activism. They invoke “civility” while undermining the First Amendment.
The DEI-Washing Chief Executive
This president loves diversity statements—for marketing. Meanwhile, they ignore racial harassment complaints, target outspoken faculty of color, or cut ethnic studies under the guise of “realignment.” Their commitment to equity is perfectly proportional to the next accreditation review.
The Climate Hypocrite
At Earth Day, they pose with solar panels. In the boardroom, they argue that divesting from fossil fuels is “unrealistic.” Student climate groups often face administrative smothering, and sustainability staffers are rotated out when they ask uncomfortable questions.
Why “Creepiness” Matters
Creepy leaders normalize:
an erosion of democratic rights on campus,
the quiet expansion of surveillance,
the targeting of vulnerable students and workers, and
a form of managerial governance that undermines the public purpose of higher education.
Higher education is supposed to be a refuge for inquiry, dissent, creativity, and collective imagination. Presidents who govern through fear—whether subtle or overt—pose a deeper threat than those who merely mismanage budgets. They hollow out the civic core of academic life.
A Call for Reader Feedback
HEI is building a more comprehensive and accountable registry of America’s Creepiest College Presidents, and we want your help.
Who on your campus fits these criteria?
Which presidents (past or present) deserve examination?
What specific stories, patterns, or documents should be highlighted?
What additional criteria should be added for future reporting?
Send your confidential tips, analyses, and suggestions. Together, we can shine light into administrative corners that have remained dark for far too long.
Higher Education Inquirer welcomes further input and encourages readers to share this article with colleagues, student groups, labor organizers, and university newspapers.
Calls for divestment from exploitative industries have long been part of movements for social and economic justice—whether opposing apartheid, fossil fuels, or private prisons. Today, another sector demands moral scrutiny: the network of for-profit education corporations and student loan servicers that have turned higher learning into a site of mass indebtedness and despair. From predatory colleges to the companies that profit from collecting on student debt, the system functions as a pipeline of extraction. For those who believe education should serve the public good, the issue is not merely financial—it is moral.
The Human Cost of Predatory Education
For decades, for-profit college chains such as Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, the University of Phoenix, DeVry, and Capella targeted low-income students, veterans, single parents, and people of color with high-pressure marketing and promises of career advancement. These institutions, funded primarily through federal student aid, often charged premium tuition for substandard programs that left graduates worse off than when they began.
When Corinthian and ITT Tech collapsed, they left hundreds of thousands of students with worthless credits and mountains of debt. But the collapse did not end the exploitation—it simply shifted it. The business model has re-emerged in online form through education technology and “online program management” (OPM) firms such as 2U, Coursera, and Academic Partnerships. These firms, in partnership with elite universities like Harvard, Yale, and USC, replicate the same dynamics of inflated costs, opaque contracts, and limited accountability.
The Servicing of Debt as a Business Model
Beyond the schools themselves, student loan servicers and collectors—Maximus, Sallie Mae, and Navient among them—have built immense profits from managing and pursuing student debt. Sallie Mae, once a government-sponsored enterprise, was privatized in the 2000s and evolved into a powerful lender and loan securitizer. Navient, its spinoff, became notorious for deceptive practices and aggressive collections that trapped borrowers in cycles of delinquency.
Maximus, a major federal contractor, now services defaulted student loans on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education. These companies profit directly from the misery of borrowers—many of whom are victims of predatory schools or structural inequality. Their incentive is not to liberate students from debt, but to sustain and expand it.
The Role of Institutional Investors
The complicity of institutional investors cannot be ignored. Pension funds, endowments, and major asset managers have consistently financed both for-profit colleges and loan servicers, even after repeated scandals and lawsuits. Public sector pension funds—ironically funded by educators—have held stock in Navient, Maximus, and large for-profit college operators. Endowments that pride themselves on ethical or ESG investing have too often overlooked education profiteering.
Investment firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street collectively hold billions of dollars in these companies, stabilizing an industry that thrives on the financial vulnerability of students. To profit from predatory education is to participate, however indirectly, in the commodification of aspiration.
Divestment as a Moral and Educational Act
Divesting from predatory education companies and loan servicers is not just an act of conscience—it is an educational statement in itself. It affirms that learning should be a vehicle for liberation, not a mechanism of debt servitude. When universities, pension boards, and faith-based investors divest from corporations like Maximus, Navient, and 2U, they are reclaiming education’s moral purpose.
The divestment movement offers a broader civic lesson: that profit and progress are not synonymous, and that investment must align with justice. Faith communities, student debt activists, and labor unions have made similar stands before—against apartheid, tobacco, and fossil fuels. The same principle applies here. An enterprise that depends on deception, coercion, and financial harm has no place in a socially responsible portfolio.
A Call to Action
Transparency is essential. Pension boards, university endowments, and foundations must disclose their holdings in for-profit education and student loan servicing companies. Independent investigations should assess the human consequences of these investments, particularly their disproportionate impact on women, veterans, and people of color.
The next step is moral divestment. Educational institutions, public pension systems, and religious organizations should commit to withdrawing investments from predatory education stocks and debt servicers. Funds should be redirected to debt relief, community college programs, and initiatives that restore trust in education as a public good.
The corporate education complex—spanning recruitment, instruction, lending, and collection—has monetized both hope and hardship. The time has come to sever public and institutional complicity in this cycle. Education should empower, not impoverish. Divestment is not merely symbolic—it is a declaration of values, a demand for accountability, and a reaffirmation of education’s original promise: to serve humanity rather than exploit it.
Sources:
U.S. Department of Education, Borrower Defense to Repayment Reports
Senate HELP Committee, For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success (2012)
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) enforcement actions against Navient and Sallie Mae
The Century Foundation, Online Program Managers and the Public Interest
Student Borrower Protection Center, Profiting from Pain: The Financialization of the Student Debt Crisis
The University of Phoenix has launched TransferPath, a mobile app promising prospective students a quick estimate of how many previous college credits might transfer toward a Phoenix degree. At first glance, it sounds like a win: upload your transcripts, get a pre-evaluation, and move faster toward completing your degree. The EdTech Innovation Hub article covering the launch presents the app as an unambiguously positive innovation—but a closer look raises serious questions.
The EdTech piece reads more like a press release than investigative reporting. It offers no insight into how pre-evaluations are calculated, whether faculty are involved, or how often initial predictions align with final credit acceptance. Without this transparency, students risk developing false confidence and making financial or academic decisions based on incomplete or misleading information.
The app also reflects the asymmetry of power between institution and student. While marketed as a convenience, it is ultimately a recruitment tool. The University of Phoenix controls which credits are accepted, and the app’s messaging may funnel students into its programs regardless of whether other paths would better serve their educational goals.
Missing from the coverage is context. Phoenix’s history as a for-profit institution has drawn scrutiny over retention rates, student debt, and degree outcomes. Presenting TransferPath without acknowledging this background creates a misleading narrative that the app is purely a student-centered innovation. Equity concerns are similarly absent. Students without smartphones, stable internet, or digital literacy may be excluded or misled. There is no evidence that the app serves all students fairly or that its credit predictions are accurate across diverse educational backgrounds.
TransferPath may indeed offer some convenience, but convenience alone does not equal value. Prospective students deserve clarity, honesty, and rigorous evaluation of how tools like this actually function. They need more than marketing optimism—they need realistic guidance to navigate the complexities of credit transfer, institutional incentives, and long-term outcomes.
Until such transparency and accountability are provided, TransferPath risks being more of a recruitment gimmick than a meaningful step forward in higher education.
The stock market is up. Politicians beam on cable news about “economic resilience.” But on the ground, the picture looks very different. Jobs are scarce or unstable, rents keep rising, and food insecurity is back to 1980s levels. The government shutdown has hit federal workers, SNAP recipients, and service programs for the poor and disabled. And what does Washington offer the hungry? Cheese—literally and metaphorically.
Government cheese once symbolized a broken welfare system—a processed product handed out to the desperate while politicians preached self-reliance. Today’s version is digital and disembodied: food banks filled with castoffs, online portals for benefits that don’t come, “relief” programs that require a master’s degree to navigate. People are told to be grateful while they wait in line for what little is left.
Meanwhile, the headlines celebrate record-breaking stock prices and defense contracts. Billions flow abroad to Argentina, Ukraine, and Israel—especially Israel, where U.S. aid underwrites weapons used in what many describe as genocide in Palestine. Corporate media downplay it, politicians justify it, and dissenters are told they’re unpatriotic.
In the U.S., the old cry of “personal responsibility” masks the reality of neoliberal economics—a system that privatizes profit and socializes pain. When the government shuts down, it’s the poor who feel it first. The “educated underclass”—graduates burdened by debt, adjuncts working without benefits, laid-off professionals—are just a few missed paychecks away from standing in the same line for government cheese.
Yet many Americans don’t see who the real enemy is. They turn on one another—Democrats versus Republicans, urban versus rural, native-born versus immigrant—while the architects of austerity watch from gated communities. The spectacle distracts from the structural theft: trillions transferred upward, democracy traded for debt, justice sold to the highest bidder.
“Let them eat cheese” is no longer a historical joke. It’s the bipartisan message of a political class that rewards Wall Street while abandoning Main Street. And as long as the public stays divided, hungry, and distracted, the pantry of power remains locked.
Sources
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). “Household Food Insecurity in the United States in 2024.”
Gary Roth. The Educated Underclass.
Congressional Budget Office (CBO). “Economic Effects of a Government Shutdown.”
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Wealth Inequality and Stock Market Concentration.”
The Intercept. “How U.S. Weapons and Aid Fuel the Assault on Gaza.”
Associated Press. “Food Banks Report Record Demand Amid Inflation.”
Jacobin Magazine. “Neoliberalism and the Return of American Austerity.”
Reuters. “U.S. Sends Billions in Loans and Aid to Argentina.”
Economic Policy Institute (EPI). “Wage Stagnation and the Cost of Living Crisis.”
(In 2017, we collaborated with Crush the Street on a video describing the College Meltdown.)
“Education is not merely a credentialing system; it is a humanizing act that fosters connection, purpose, and community.”
Origins
The College Meltdown began in the early 2010s as a blog chronicling the slow collapse of U.S. higher education. Rising tuition, mounting student debt, and corporatization were visible signs, but the deeper crisis was structural: the erosion of public accountability and mission.
By 2015, the warning signs were unmistakable to us. On some campuses, student spaces were closed to host corporate “best practices” conferences. At many schools, adjunct instructors carried the bulk of teaching responsibilities, often without benefits, while administrators celebrated innovation. Higher education was quietly being reshaped to benefit corporations over students and communities — a true meltdown.
Patterns of the Meltdown
Enrollment in U.S. colleges began declining as early as 2011, reflecting broader demographic shifts: fewer children entering the system and a growing population of older adults. Small colleges, community colleges, and regional public universities were hardest hit, while flagship institutions consolidated wealth and prestige.
Corporate intermediaries known as Online Program Managers (OPMs) managed recruitment, marketing, and course design, taking large portions of tuition while universities retained risk. Fully automated robocolleges emerged, relying on AI-driven templates, predictive analytics, and outsourced grading. While efficient, these systems dehumanized education: students became data points, faculty became monitors, and mentorship disappeared.
“Robocolleges and AI-driven systems reduce humans to data points — an education stripped of connection is no education at all.”
Feeding the AI Beast
As part of our effort to reclaim knowledge and influence public discourse, we actively contributed to Wikipedia. Over the years, we made more than 12,000 edits on higher education topics, ensuring accurate documentation of predatory practices, adjunct labor, OPMs, and corporatization. These edits both informed the public and, inadvertently, fed the AI beast — large language models and AI systems that scrape Wikipedia for training data now reflect our work, amplifying it in ways we could never have predicted.
“By documenting higher education rigorously, we shaped both public knowledge and the datasets powering AI systems — turning transparency into a tool of influence.”
Anxiety, Anomie, and Alienation
The College Meltdown documented the mental health toll of these transformations. Rising anxiety, feelings of anomie, and widespread alienation were linked to AI reliance, dehumanized classrooms, insecure faculty labor, and societal pressures. Students felt like credential seekers; faculty suffered burnout.
“Addressing the psychological and social effects of dehumanized education is essential for ethical recovery.”
Trump, Anti-Intellectualism, and Fear in the Era of Neoliberalism
The project also addressed the broader political and social climate. The Trump era brought rising anti-intellectualism, skepticism toward expertise, and a celebration of market logic over civic and moral education. For many, it was an era of fear: fear of surveillance, fear of litigation, fear of being marginalized in a rapidly corporatized, AI-driven educational system. Neoliberal policies exacerbated these pressures, emphasizing privatization, metrics, and competition over community and care.
“Living under Trump-era neoliberalism, with AI monitoring, corporate oversight, and mass surveillance, education became a space of anxiety as much as learning.”
Quality of Life and the Call for Rehumanization
Education should serve human well-being, not just revenue. The blog emphasized Quality of Life and advocated for Rehumanization — restoring mentorship, personal connection, and ethical engagement.
“Rehumanization is not a luxury; it is the foundation of meaningful learning.”
FOIA Requests and Whistleblowers
From the start, The College Meltdown relied on evidence-based reporting. FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests were used to obtain internal communications, budgets, and regulatory filings, shining light on opaque practices. Whistleblowers, including adjunct faculty and staff at universities and OPMs, provided firsthand testimony of misconduct, financial malfeasance, and educational dehumanization. Their courage was central to the project’s mission of transparency and accountability.
“Insider testimony and public records revealed the hidden forces reshaping higher education, from corporate influence to predatory practices.”
Historical Sociology: Understanding the Systemic Collapse
The importance of historical sociology cannot be overstated in analyzing the decline of higher education. By examining the evolution of educational systems, we can identify patterns of inequality, the concentration of power, and the commodification of knowledge. Historical sociology provides the tools to understand how past decisions and structures have led to the current crisis.
“Historical sociology reveals, defines, and formulates patterns of social development, helping us understand the systemic forces at play in education.”
Naming Bad Actors: Accountability and Reform
A critical aspect of The College Meltdown was the emphasis on naming bad actors — identifying and holding accountable those responsible for the exploitation and degradation of higher education. This included:
University Administrators: Prioritizing profit over pedagogy.
Corporate Entities: OPMs profiting at the expense of educational quality.
Political Figures and Ultraconservatives: Promoting policies that undermined public education and anti-intellectualism.
“Holding bad actors accountable is essential for meaningful reform and the restoration of education’s ethical purpose.”
Existential Aspects of Climate Change
The blog also examined the existential dimensions of climate change. Students and faculty face a dual challenge: preparing for uncertain futures while witnessing environmental degradation accelerate. Higher education itself is implicated, both as a contributor through consumption and as a forum for solutions. The looming climate crisis intensifies anxiety, alienation, and the urgency for ethical, human-centered education.
“Climate change makes the stakes of education existential: our survival, our knowledge, and our moral responsibility are intertwined.”
Mass Speculation and Financialization
Another critical theme explored was mass speculation and financialization. The expansion of student debt markets, tuition-backed bonds, and corporate investments in higher education transformed students into financial instruments. These speculative dynamics mirrored broader economic instability, creating both a moral and systemic crisis for the educational sector.
“When education becomes a commodity for speculation, learning, mentorship, and ethical development are subordinated to profit and risk metrics.”
Coverage of Protests and Nonviolent Resistance
The College Meltdown documented student and faculty resistance: tuition protests, adjunct labor actions, and campaigns against predatory OPM arrangements. Nonviolent action was central: teach-ins, sit-ins, and organized campaigns demonstrated moral authority and communal solidarity in the face of systemic pressures, litigation, and corporate intimidation.
Collaboration and Resistance
Glen McGhee provided exceptional guidance, connecting insights on systemic collapse, inequality, and credential inflation. Guest authors contributed across disciplines and movements, making the blog a living archive of accountability and solidarity:
Guest Contributors:
Bryan Alexander, Ann Bowers, James Michael Brodie, Randall Collins, Garrett Fitzgerald, Erica Gallagher, Henry Giroux, David Halperin, Bill Harrington, Phil Hill, Robert Jensen, Hank Kalet, Neil Kraus, the LACCD Whistleblower, Wendy Lynne Lee, Annelise Orleck, Robert Kelchen, Debbi Potts, Jack Metzger, Derek Newton, Gary Roth, Mark Salisbury, Gary Stocker, Harry Targ, Heidi Weber, Richard Wolff, and Helena Worthen.
Lessons from the Meltdown
The crisis was systemic. Technology amplified inequality. Corporate higher education rebranded rather than reformed. Adjunctification and labor precarity became normalized. Communities of color and working-class students suffered disproportionately.
Dehumanization emerged as a central theme. AI, automation, and robocolleges prioritized efficiency over mentorship, data over dialogue, and systems over human relationships. Rising anxiety, anomie, and alienation reflected the human toll.
“Rehumanization, mentorship, community, transparency, ethical accountability, and ecological awareness are essential to restore meaningful higher education.”
Looking Forward
As higher education entered the Trump era, its future remained uncertain. Students, faculty, and communities faced fear under neoliberal policies, AI-driven monitoring, mass surveillance, litigation pressures, ultraconservative influence, climate crises, and financial speculation. Will universities reclaim their role as public goods, or continue as commodified services? The College Meltdown stands as a testament to those who resisted dehumanization and anti-intellectualism. It also calls for Quality of Life, ethical practice, mental well-being, environmental responsibility, and Rehumanization, ensuring education serves the whole person, not just the bottom line.
Sources and References
Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid. Doubleday, 2006.
Rosenthal, Elisabeth. An American Sickness. Penguin, 2017.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Crown, 2010.
Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul. University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Paucek, Chip. “2U and the Growth of OPMs.” EdSurge, 2021. link
Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Basic Books, 2010.
Alexander, Bryan. Academia Next. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.
U.S. Department of Education. “Closed School Information.” 2016–2020. link
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Student Debt Statistics, 2024. link
Wayback Machine Archive of College Meltdown Blog: link
This month, The Higher Education Inquirer has surpassed 280,000 views, the highest in our history. That milestone is not just a number — it represents the growing community of readers who care about uncovering the truth behind higher education’s power structures.
And yet, we must also be candid: we are considering ceasing operations at the very moment our popularity is peaking. Some may find this paradox hard to understand. Why step back now, when the audience has never been larger?
The reality is that investigative journalism is most vulnerable when it is most effective. Our work has never been about clicks or page views; it has been about holding powerful institutions accountable. With that mission has come heightened scrutiny and retaliation. The lawsuit we currently face is just one example of the legal and financial pressures designed to silence independent voices. Even when such cases are ultimately thrown out or defeated, the process is exhausting and expensive, diverting energy away from reporting and into survival.
Beyond the lawsuit, the sustainability of this project has always been tenuous. Unlike large media corporations, we have no shield of corporate lawyers, no deep-pocketed donors, and no guarantee of steady funding. Every article is the product of labor that is often invisible — research, fact-checking, and the personal toll of constant resistance to disinformation and intimidation.
In this environment, popularity does not equate to stability. If anything, it makes us more of a target. The more people read, the more those exposed by our work have an incentive to retaliate.
If The Higher Education Inquirer does close, it will not be because the audience wasn’t there. It will be because the system in which independent journalism struggles to survive has failed to protect those doing the work.
We remain deeply grateful to our readers. Whether this is a pause, a transition, or an end, we want you to understand why we are considering this step. The paradox of our situation speaks volumes about the fragility of truth-telling in America — and the lengths to which power will go to keep it contained.
