While student loan repayment has resumed, stability is an illusion. Beneath the surface, mounting delinquency, administrative chaos, and the potential dismantling of federal loan management point to a deeper crisis in the governance of higher education finance.
Over the past year, the much-touted right-wing embrace of anti-monopolism has been reduced to a distant memory. What has emerged instead is a personalist form of market governance, where regulatory authority persists only insofar as it serves the ambitions of political insiders.
Recent authoritarian attacks on higher education mark a significant shift from the neoliberal era, which celebrated institutional independence from the state, the role of education in boosting worker productivity, and the value of research in driving profitable innovation. However, there are key continuities between the two periods. The neoliberal era laid the groundwork for today’s authoritarian turn by making public institutions increasingly reliant on federal funding, dismantling independent state planning boards, and deepening inequality within the higher education system.
When it's time to rebuild from the wreckage of the Trump-Musk rampage, the left may have the opportunity to implement a truly transformative agenda. However, unless we have relatively detailed proposals ready in advance, we will lose out to those who merely want to reproduce what came before.
According to a common antimonopoly narrative, prior to the merger wave of the 1980s, antitrust enforcement kept the meatpacking industry competitive and relatively decentralized — a situation that enhanced farmers' autonomy and bargaining power. Yet a closer look at the historical record reveals that this fierce midcentury competition also undermined the unionized labor force and New-Deal regulatory regimes that previously dispersed power. Correcting this narrative should encourage antimonopolists not to become too starry-eyed about "competition" as a market regulator.
The articles, blogs, exit polls, charts, tweets, and skeets that have been helping us make sense of the 2024 election.
