This book offers a critical diagnosis of higher education’s decline under neoliberal capitalism. Drawing on political philosophy, critical theory, and educational thought, the book explores how market-driven metrics have eroded academic freedom, tenure, and the humanities, while undermining the democratic values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Di Leo interrogates the ideological and structural failures of contemporary academe and proposes acts of resistance as a path forward. This book reframes the university as a site of struggle between democratic education and neoliberal obsolescence. This book is essential reading for scholars of higher education, critical pedagogy, and political theory seeking to understand the twilight of academic life and imagine what might follow its collapse.

Jeffrey R. Di Leo is Distinguished Professor of English and Philosophy at Texas A&M University, Victoria, USA. He is the author and editor of over forty books on higher education, literary theory, and neoliberalism, including Dark Academe (2024), Catastrophe and Higher Education (2020), and Corporate Humanities in Higher Education (2014).