In MAGAcademy, Nolan Higdon rejects the notion that Trumpism is an external threat to higher education. Offering both “memoir and manifesto,” he powerfully reframes the debate and argues that the alignment of fascist politics and academic corporatism is the logical endpoint of systems that neoliberal administrators built from the 1970s to the present. Drawing on his experience as a "freeway flier" teaching across multiple campuses, he offers an insider’s perspective on the corporate gutting and the marketization of education that left faculty powerless and students surveilled. Today, 68% of faculty work in precarious adjunct positions, while students struggle with $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. Yet Higdon offers hope: mandate that 90% of instructional hours be taught by tenure-track faculty, reject technological fetishism, rebuild the civic university as a democratic anchor, and fund tuition-free education through wealth and excise taxes. This is essential and urgent reading for reclaiming colleges and universities as democratic public goods.

"Higdon weaves together personal experiences and decades of scholarship into a narrative that is sharp, brave, and, at times, thrilling. He draws on a wide-array of sources, from philosophical treatises to sociological studies to TicToc videos, revealing an omnivorous intellectual appetite that strengthens his argumentation. The  assessment of the state of Higher Ed he offers might seem bleak to some, but for those of us working in higher ed right now, particularly as contingent faculty, it will undoubtedly resonate and, one hopes, stir us all to collective action." 

“Once again, Higdon has peeled back the curtain of an institution with which we may feel a certain familiarity, especially for those of us on the inside, and written an incisive criticism that forces us to look more closely at our day-to-day professional and personal lived experiences. Through Higdon's lens, it becomes clear that seemingly small choices of the past have huge impacts on today, many of them negative. Never one to dwell in pessimism, he also provides readers with ways to push back and reverse the harmful course of those decisions. Blending critical history, pedagogy, analysis, and autoethnography, Higdon paints a picture of higher education that we must look at closely, both to understand ourselves better and to make productive and holistic, humane change.”

Description Anyone who works in a university in the United States today knows that higher education is in crisis. In MAGAcademy, Nolan Higdon offers a cogent explanation of how we got here, what the consequences are, and what we might do about it. Through the lens of his own experience as non-tenured faculty,  Higdon moves beyond culture wars and moral panics to explain the neoliberal university's institutional failings. The adjunctification of faculty and the explosion of non-sensical administrative positions have devalued education, making our universities prime targets for right-wing authoritarian control. With often humorous anecdotes, clear historical context, and jargon-free analysis, MAGAcademy  paints a portrait of our academic institutions that will be painfully recognizable to those on the inside and illuminating to those on the outside. Offering strong proposals for how to remake higher education in a post-neoliberal era, Higdon's book should be required reading for professors, students, and anyone who cares about building a democratic future.    goes here

With clarity and elegance Nolan Higdon explains how an uneducated authoritarian President came to wheeled such great power over our institutions of higher learning. Higdon lays out the market-based pressures, long in the making, that led to Trump’s MAGAcademy. Boards of Directors from the moneyed class, corporate consultants preaching the bottom line and eager administrators willing to implement policies hostile to educational principles had already hollowed out American universities. White House demands for ideological fealty in exchange for continued funding was just the last trade off in this decades-long process of compromise.

Writing at times from an insider’s view he is an active participant at the heart of the struggle, detailing the fight to preserve open debate and free expression, as anti-genocide protests were soon to be shut down on college and university campuses. In the end, Higdon offers ways to rebuild higher education through our collective refusal to accept the logic of the market as inevitable.

While many people focus on the 2nd Trump Administration Higdon effectively illustrates that the neoliberal assault on higher education began decades ago. This has both slowed down the progress of knowledge and commodified education causing students to be unprepared for the job market. The neoliberal assault has led to an overreliance on (often exploited) contingent faculty while many full-time academics prioritize careerism. Higdon does not just offer a critique he offers seven thoughtful proposals to undo the damage. This book is highly recommended for anyone passionate about higher education and may offer a way for conservatives and liberals to find common ground. 

Description gMAGAcademy is both a history of higher education’s corporatization and a deep analysis of the crises facing American universities as Trump seeks to dismantle them. Higdon traces the neoliberal policies and practices that transformed campuses into market-driven institutions, underscoring the complicity of the institutions themselves as he details the damage done. Most importantly, the book does not include a call to merely reject Trumpism in order to restore the status quo. Instead it offers concrete proposals “to reclaim higher education from corporate control and realign it to truly serve the people.” Writing with clarity and authority, Higdon blends historical evidence, personal anecdote, and data analysis–into what he calls "memoir and manifesto"–to make MAGAcademy both an engaging and urgent read.oes here

Dr. Nolan Higdon has brought us a brave and heartfelt critique of the current state of higher education in the U.S. This fiercely honest book is likely to upset many liberals and conservatives alike. By taking on the so-called sacred cows of academia like Student Accommodations and Success Centers, and DEI offices, Higdon exposes that history didn’t begin with the election of Donald Trump. His well-researched and articulated arguments detail how decades of neoliberal practices in higher education actually cleared the way and set the agenda for the MAGAfication of academia. Drawing on his own extensive experience in higher education, alongside original survey research, and historical and political economic analysis, Higdon shines a bright light on the failures of most colleges and universities in the U.S., and the ways they have embraced an ever-expanding bureaucratic apparatus, administrative bloat, increasing surveillance and control of both faculty and students, and absurd procedures that must be followed while they distract faculty from the core responsibilities of teaching and scholarship. Dr. Higdon also explores the divide and conquer strategies of neoliberal institutions that pit tenured and tenure track faculty against the precarious non-tenured part-time faculty that now provide the bulk of the instruction in most colleges and universities in the U.S. He illustrates how the modern corporate university that treats students as customers and faculty as customer service representatives is unable to push back against the often-exaggerated criticism coming from the right. And he ends this important and timely book with a blueprint for getting out of the mess that those of us in higher education have largely created for ourselves. Digging down into the key issues affecting modern academia, this is a radical book, in the original sense of the word, and one that doesn’t flinch from confronting how the MAGA agenda emerged as a doppelgänger of the neoliberalism manifested by the modern establishment Democratic Party.

Media critic and analyst Nolan Higdon, a university professor gives readers a front row seat to what is really happening in America. The book is both a trip through his broad experience and a revealing look inside a world many don’t know or recognize.  His insight is eye-opening. I found myself saying: “I had no idea.”  And many will probably think the same thing as they read “MAGAcademy: How Corporatism Paved the Way for the Hostile Takeover of Higher Ed’.  Critical inquiry seems to be AWOL at a time when many of us don’t have the “media literacy” to recognize the moves, in front of and behind the curtain, that are changing institutions like never before.  Higdon is the perfect intellectual in the vein of the late Robert McChesney. Both want citizens to open their eyes to the real forces at work, as well as those who fall in line and parrot the official line.

Higdon’s timely project examines how contemporary higher education has been reshaped by hyper-rational market logic, mismanaged managerial governance, and corporate influence. It explores the sharp growth of administrative power, the casualization of academic labor, and the erosion of academic freedom, situating these developments within longer histories of neoliberal reform. 

Combining nuanced historical context with sharp institutional analysis, Higdon challenges common assumptions about efficiency, accountability, and “student success,” while showing how universities have been reoriented away from public knowledge and democratic inquiry. Rather than nostalgia or partisan critique, it offers a structural explanation of how today’s academy functions—and why meaningful reform requires confronting its underlying political economy.