The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U.S. Higher Education

The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U.S. Higher Education
Author: Nicholas Daniel Hartlep
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Capitalism and education
ISBN: 9781138194656

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- List of Contributors -- Foreword -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part I Critical Perspectives on Financing Higher Education in the United States -- 1 Financing Higher Education in the United States: A Historical Overview of Loans in Federal Financial Aid Policy -- 2 Bankruptcy Means-Testing, Austerity Measures, and Student Loan Debt -- 3 African American Student Loan Debt: Deferring the Dream of Higher Education -- 4 Monetary Critique and Student Debt -- Part II The Debt That Won't Go Away: Stories of Non-Dischargeable Student Debt -- 5 The Rise of the Adjuncts: Neoliberalism Invades the Professoriate -- 6 "BFAMFAPhD": An Adjunct Professor's Personal Experience With Student Debt Long After Leaving Graduate School -- 7 Debt(s) We Can't Walk Out On: National Adjunct Walkout Day, Complicity, and the Neoliberal Threat to Social Movements in the Academy -- 8 Misplaced Faith in the American Dream: Buried in Debt in the Catacombs of the Ivory Tower -- 9 An Adjunct Professor's Communication Barriers With Neoliberal Student Debt Collectors -- 10 "Golden Years" in the Red: Student Loan Debt as Economic Slavery -- 11 Should I Go Back to College? -- Part III Alternatives to American Neoliberal Financing of Higher Education -- 12 Free Tuition: Prospects for Extending Free Schooling Into the Postsecondary Years -- 13 "Work Colleges" as an Alternative to Student Loan Debt -- 14 It Takes More Than a Village, It Takes a Nation -- 15 Monetary Transformation and Public Education -- 16 Reflections on the Future: Setting the Agenda for a Post-Neoliberal U.S. Higher Education -- Name Index -- Subject Index

Student Loan Debt as a "Wicked Problem"

Student Loan Debt as a
Author: Nicholas D. Hartlep
Publisher: Dio Press Incorporated
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2022-04-30
Genre:
ISBN: 9781645042471

The majority of what gets written about student loan debt ties rapidly rising tuition to state disinvestment, cost disease, among other forces that are internal or external to the academy. The neoliberal regime of truth is that a college education is worth incurring student loan debt. Human capital is the motif. The financial "payoff" is seen as a logical reason to go to college and to "invest" in one's future. This book offers a counter-perspective. The editor of this volume places the debt crisis within a "Wicked Problem" framework to help explain why the student debt crisis in U.S. Higher Education doesn't seem to be getting better despite valiant attempts to do so. The complexity of higher education financing and policy is immense, and it is no coincidence that change is slow. The chapters in this book will point out that while the main culprit for why students continue to graduate with more and more student loan debt is not individual choice, but rather evidence of the neoliberal ecosystem of higher education, itself.

The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U.S. Higher Education

The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U.S. Higher Education
Author: Nicholas Hartlep
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2017-05-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317272013

Capturing the voices of Americans living with student debt in the United States, this collection critiques the neoliberal interest-driven, debt-based system of U.S. higher education and offers alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and the corporatized university. Grounded in an understanding of the historical and political economic context, this book offers auto-ethnographic experiences of living in debt, and analyzes alternatives to the current system. Chapter authors address real questions such as, Do collegians overestimate the economic value of going to college? and How does the monetary system that student loans are part of operate? Pinpointing how developments in the political economy are accountable for students’ university experiences, this book provides an authoritative contribution to research in the fields of educational foundations and higher education policy and finance.

The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U.S. Higher Education

The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U.S. Higher Education
Author: Nicholas D. Hartlep
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2017-05-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317272005

Capturing the voices of Americans living with student debt in the United States, this collection critiques the neoliberal interest-driven, debt-based system of U.S. higher education and offers alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and the corporatized university. Grounded in an understanding of the historical and political economic context, this book offers auto-ethnographic experiences of living in debt, and analyzes alternatives to the current system. Chapter authors address real questions such as, Do collegians overestimate the economic value of going to college? and How does the monetary system that student loans are part of operate? Pinpointing how developments in the political economy are accountable for students’ university experiences, this book provides an authoritative contribution to research in the fields of educational foundations and higher education policy and finance.

The Real College Debt Crisis

The Real College Debt Crisis
Author: William Elliott III
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2015-07-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1440836477

Is it still worth it for low-income students to attend college, given the debt incurred? This book provides a new framework for evaluating the financial aid system in America, positing that aid must not only allow access to higher education, but also help students succeed in college and facilitate their financial health post-college. Higher education plays a critical role in the economy and society of the United States, creating a ladder of economic opportunity for American children, especially for those in poverty. Unfortunately, higher education today increasingly reinforces patterns of relative privilege, particularly as students without the benefit of affluent parents rely more and more on student loans to finance college access. This book presents penetrating new information about the fiscal realities of the current debt-based college loan system and raises tough questions about the extent to which student loans can be a viable way to facilitate equitable access to higher education. The book opens with relevant parts of the life stories of two students—one who grew up poor and had to take on high amounts of student debt, and another whose family could offer financial help at critical times. These real-life examples provide invaluable insight into the student debt problem and help make the complex data more understandable. A wide range of readers—from scholars of poverty, social policy, and educational equality to policymakers to practitioners in the fields of student financial aid and financial planning—will find the information in this text invaluable.

The Debt Trap

The Debt Trap
Author: Josh Mitchell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1501199447

"The dramatic untold story of the student loan debt crisis in America. In 1981, a new executive at the student loan giant Sallie Mae took home the company's financial documents to review. 'You've got to be shitting me,' he later told the company's CEO. 'This place is a gold mine.' Far from making college affordable, the student loan system has created a college-industrial complex that has submerged multiple generations in debt. For millions, their college investment turned into a nightmare: 43 million people owe a combined $1.6 trillion in student debt, more than both credit card debt and car loans. How did we get here? Acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell's landmark investigation is the first book to tell the full story of the student loan debt crisis in America. Mitchell shows how the program began in the 1950s, evolved into a grand social experiment in the 1960s, got overtaken by greedy colleges in the 1980s and 1990s, and was unleashed in the 2000s by Sallie Mae, the billion-dollar company that turned student lending into big business. Based on eight years of reporting and hundreds of interviews with the decision-makers who crafted the program, The Debt Trap never loses sight of the countless student victims whose lives have been forever altered by a predatory lending system. Mitchell's defining book shows how the narrative of higher education as a ticket to the American Dream fueled the rise of a rapacious system that one of its original architects called a 'monster'".--From dust jacket.

Student Debt

Student Debt
Author: Sandy Baum
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2016-07-20
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1137527382

This book analyzes reliable evidence to tell the true story of student debt in America. One of the nation’s foremost experts on college finance, Sandy Baum exposes how misleading the widely accepted narrative on student debt is. Baum combines data, research, and analysis to show how the current discourse obscures serious problems, risks misdirecting taxpayer dollars, and could deprive too many Americans of the educational opportunities they deserve. This book and its policy recommendations provide the basis for a new and more constructive national agenda to make paying for college more manageable.

Higher Education and Disaster Capitalism in the Age of COVID-19

Higher Education and Disaster Capitalism in the Age of COVID-19
Author: Marina Vujnovic
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2022-11-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3031123700

This book reveals the layered effects of the corporatization of higher education, situated within the phenomenon of disaster capitalism. The authors argue that higher education administrators have seized on the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to advance a corporate higher education agenda consistent with the principles of disaster capitalism. This crisis deeply impacts what and how students in the United States learn, who gets to learn, and the very mission of the academy. Chapters also address neoliberalism as a policy statement that has reshaped and continues to shape higher education in the United States and in much of Western societies.

Sold My Soul for a Student Loan

Sold My Soul for a Student Loan
Author: Daniel T. Kirsch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2019-04-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1440850720

With unprecedented student debt keeping an entire generation from realizing the "American Dream," this book sounds a warning about how that debt may undermine both higher education—and our democracy. American higher education boasts one of the most impressive legacies in the world, but the price of admission for many is now endless debt. As this book shows, increasing educational indebtedness undermines the real value of higher education in our democracy. To help readers understand this dilemma, the book examines how student debt became commonplace and what the long-term effects of such an ongoing reality might be. Sold My Soul for a Student Loan examines this vitally important issue from an unprecedented diversity of perspectives, focusing on the fact that student debt is hindering the ability of millions of people to enter the job market, the housing market, the consumer economy, and the political process. Among other topics, the book covers the history of consumer debt in the United States, the history of federal policy toward higher education, and political action in response to the issue of student debt. Perhaps most importantly, it explores the new relationship debtor-citizens have to the government as a result of debt, and how that impacts democracy for a new generation.

Neoliberalizing the University: Implications for American Democracy

Neoliberalizing the University: Implications for American Democracy
Author: Sanford Schram
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131727167X

This collection brings together essays to address the crisis of Higher Education today, focusing on its neoliberalization. Higher Education has been under assault for several decades as neoliberalism’s preference for market-based reforms sweeps across the US political economy. The recent push for neoliberalizing the academy comes at a time when it is ripe for change, especially as it continues to confront growing financial pressure, particularly in the public sector. The resulting cutbacks in public funding, especially to state universities, led to a variety of debilitating changes: increases in tuition, growing student debt, more students combining working and schooling, declining graduation rates for minorities and low-income students, increased reliance on adjuncts and temporary faculty, and most recently growing interest in mass processing of students via online instruction. While many serious questions arise once we begin to examine what is happening in higher education today, one particularly critical question concerns the implications of these changes on the relationship of education to as yet still unrealized democratic ideals. The 12 essays collected in this volume create important resources for students, faculty, citizens and policymakers who want to find ways to address contemporary threats to the higher education-democracy connection. This book was originally published as a special issue of New Political Science.