Michel Foucault and Higher Education Transparency

[T]ruth isn’t outside power or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. (Michel Foucault,The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature, 1971) 

Michel Foucault’s claim that truth is not outside power has lost none of its impact since stated as part of a debate with Noam Chomsky in 1971. And its relation to student-facing institutions, including universities, ministries of education, and education lenders, is more prevalent today than perhaps ever before. Every metric a university publishes—net-price estimates, ROI dashboards, visa status updates—emerges from mechanisms designed to advance particular interests, and then presented as neutral fact. 

Today the stakes are no longer abstract. A federal audit released in late 2022 shows that 91 percent of U.S. colleges still hide or understate net price in financial aid letters, leading students and their families to misread affordability.^1 The U.S. Department of Education’s 2024 overhaul of College Scorecard—which now discloses net price by income status and program-level earnings—may mean some progress, but even that dataset leaves institutional algorithms largely unseen.^2 Foucault would likely note that the apparatus itself–the institutions delivering this data–remains half-invisible.

Two case studies reveal the consequences of opacity:

• The University of Farmington sting (U.S., 2024). A federal appeals court revived a class action for roughly 600 mostly Indian students duped into paying tuition to a government-run fake campus. The court held that Homeland Security could be sued for breaching an educational contract—a reminder that even an official SEVIS listing can mask a trap when the data maker controls the narrative.^3

• Canada’s 35 percent study-permit cap (2024). Ottawa cut all new study permits after finding that some private colleges were issuing acceptances without disclosing real housing and living costs. Students arrived to overcrowded motels and unexpected bills; legitimate applicants now face a blanket restriction because of that lack of transparency.^4

In their hopeful search for the right university, both domestic and international students comb calculators and visa rules with an extremely trusting eye; they do not depart the moment the numbers wobble, but rather hold faith that the information coming directly from institutions is real. Such behaviors on the part of students is warranted---why should they not believe what they read, especially if presented by centuries-old, "top-notch" universities?

Towards a TrustED and Conscious Transparency

The aim of TrustED is not simply to “out” institutions for their inadequacies in transparent communication. It is rather to bring together universities that are willing to open themselves up to examination in order to reveal these inadequacies and then to take part in rectifying an ever-worsening situation. TrustED invites institutions to join the shared mission of upholding higher education’s promise of accessibility, accountability, student success, and world progress—not just within their own campus walls, but across the global sector. This requires a deliberate prioritization of clear and honest communication, and an unabashedly student-centered approach to higher education.

Endnotes

1. United States Government Accountability Office, Financial Aid Offers: Action Needed to Improve Information on Student Costs, GAO-23-104708 (Washington, DC, December 2022).

2. U.S. Department of Education, “Technical Documentation: College Scorecard Institution-Level Data,” June 2024, https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/.

3. Nate Raymond, “U.S. Must Face Lawsuit over Fake University Visa Sting,” Reuters, June 25, 2024.

4. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, “Canada to Stabilize Growth and Decrease Number of New International Student Permits Issued to Approximately 360,000 for 2024,” news release, January 22, 2024.

5. Council of Graduate Schools, India Brief (Washington, DC, July 2024).