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This chapter draws on qualitative data from the Mass Observation Study and interviews with students to explore how members of the general public, and prospective and current students, frame the meaning of Higher Education, both in policy terms and according to their own experience. This analysis highlights a central contradiction within the position held by the 21st century University in the public imagination. On one hand, expansion is regarded as a progressive development, and there is a striking generosity and optimism in the ways that the provision of this experience for more young people is discussed. On the other, there are widespread concerns about the motivations and effects of massification, including the normalisation of student debt, the diminishing value of degrees, and the quality of education provided.

The Coda to Dead Pledges explores an emerging anti-debt politics, arguing that “debt strikes” and the occupation or sabotage of domestic space are forms of protest that attempt to block capital at the point of circulation. Exploring the economics of student debt and taking up the treatment of education debt as an “investment in the future,” this chapter suggests that the politics of student debt illuminate the relationship between workers and students and between the university and capitalism. It concludes by exploring the emergence of what it terms “crisis subjectivity”: a demystified condition of radical percipience and canny knowing.

This chapter explores recent trends in student loan debt, particularly the for-profit educational corporation Corinthian Colleges’ scandal, in order to define the key terms financialization and neoliberalism. Finance is playing an expanded role in higher education and securitization is being employed to capitalize off of students’ loan debt. Students are increasingly taking on debt and bearing responsibility for a capitalist economy that is stacked against them. Banks and lenders bundle and sell this debt to wealthy, white investors as securities. Given that Black and Brown borrowers take out more student loans, repay their debts plus interest over longer periods of time, and experience higher default rates compared to their white counterparts, these securities are racialized just like the individual lines of debt from which they were created.

Household debt among older Americans approaching retirement has increased dramatically over time. Older households have become increasingly more indebted and more leveraged. While mortgages remain the predominant type of debt among households in their 50s and 60s, student loan debt has also risen among these households in recent years. This chapter uses household survey data to show that more indebted older adults are more likely to work, less likely to be retired, and, on average, expect to work longer than those with less debt. Furthermore, the chapter examines how different types of debt such as mortgages, credit card debt, and student loans affect those decisions.

This chapter exposes not only the statistics but the ways that college student loan debt has become a way of teaching students ideological lessons about the public sphere and their choices in life. It presents one of the first analyses of student debt, separating myth from fact and noting the history of contemporary student loans. It argues against anti-social policy of current student debt and for free public education.

This chapter demonstrates that contemporary college student loan debt in the U.S. is similar to colonial indenture. It reviews the history of indentured servitude and shows how student debt literally reproduces some of its terms-in the idea of debt of the worker to pay for his path to a job; length of obligation and substantial amounts of debt; limited recourse; a related brokerage system; and governmental sanction. It argues against the exploitive system of current student debt and the justice that someone can sign their life to such a bond.

With the creation of the first federal student loans as part of the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the US postsecondary financial aid system was set on a path from which it has not fundamentally deviated in the intervening decades. While college financing has trended almost inexorably toward greater reliance on student borrowing as costs have outpaced families’ incomes, the major components of the financing “mix” have remained unchanged. Financial aid policy is sometimes tweaked around the edges to lighten the burden of student debt, give colleges a competitive edge, or address undesirable disincentives. For the most part, however, these reforms bear more resemblance to the classic “shell game” than to authentic innovations. What American students need are more powerful tools with which to approach their futures—tools that help them prepare for higher education, persist to completion, and then leverage returns on their degrees. What they get, however, are repackaged versions of the same blunt instruments. While everyone wants improved outcomes from our financial aid investments, the nation’s apparent inability or unwillingness to innovate truly novel approaches to paying for higher education stands in the way of progress. The goal of financial aid policy has been narrowly framed as only helping young adults pay for college, a low bar that completely ignores the role financial aid could play in influencing early education, postsecondary completion, and post-college financial health. As a result, instead of receiving support at critical junctures along the opportunity pipeline to a prosperous adulthood, students are largely left to their own devices except at the moment when the tuition bill becomes due. To capitalize on the resulting missed opportunities, the United States needs more than different loan repayment schedules or loosened rules on grant disbursement. What we need is a fundamental shift in how we think about financing higher education and what we believe about why it matters.

This chapter explores the way neoliberalism has changed the field of practice in post-16 education and training in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. While ‘third way’ politics brought a commitment to questions of social justice, neoliberalism was hugely influential in reshaping the way that universities and vocational education and training (VET) providers were to operate. Secondly the chapter will outline the major change brought about around ‘user pays’ philosophy exploring issues of fees and student debt. While this approach has a long history in some countries, by the 21st century it was fully established in the post-16 educational and training sector and, as we shall see, since the crisis it has had substantial impacts on levels of student debt. The final section of this chapter returns us to the question of the widening participation agenda, where we will examine how effective it has been in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand in bringing different social groups into the education and training field

Education is the way for low-wage workers to move into the FTE sector, as moving to the city was the way to advance in the original Lewis model. Just as slums show the difficulty migrants face in finding good jobs in cities, black and Latino graduates face difficulties finding good jobs in the FTE sector. These difficulties are increased by lack of state support for public universities, leading to increased tuition and the growth of student debt. They are increased further by for-profit colleges that often lead to debt without promising employment.

Changes in the American income distribution since the 1970s are a major source of turbulence in the higher education industry. Family incomes at the bottom of the distribution have not grown since the 1960s, while family incomes at the top have soared. For families in the middle- and upper-middle-income groups, incomes have been flat in the twenty-first century. We show how this sea change in inequality helps fuel the increase in tuition discounting, the rise in student debt, and the separation of the higher education system into well-resourced institutions for the haves and poorly financed institutions for the have-nots.

American accrediting agencies have been under increasing pressure from the government, employers, and other policy makers. These agencies are being asked to hold accredited educational institutions accountable for student learning outcomes, on-time retention and completion, and other key indicators of institutional and student success. At the same time, accreditors are often accused of stifling innovation in education with unnecessarily restrictive policies, bureaucratic and burdensome procedures, and a peer review process that is biased against new ideas and entrants into the sector. We faced these dynamics in seeking approval for Minerva to affiliate with the Keck Graduate Institute and to offer its programs in a delivery modality that had never been seen before. The process required us to build support for innovation while demonstrating the evidence-based foundation for our curriculum and teaching methods and to balance the new with generally accepted and traditional indicators of quality.

This chapter explores the possibilities for a financial system revolution that equalizes access and democratizes power, such as through movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street. Examples of steps toward equalizing access and democratizing power include student loan debt protests, municipal identification documents, community benefits agreements, and public banks. These examples demonstrate the importance of uniting incremental change with the power of people. Moreover, any revolution must intentionally challenge the financial system’s calibrations to whiteness. The financial system’s calibrations have been a global, centuries-long exercise in concentrating economic power with whiteness. The type of revolution our financial system needs cannot be achieved through technological advancements.

This chapter examines the neoliberalization of education policy at all levels of schooling from the elementary and secondary schools to colleges and universities. The chapter highlights privatization, especially charter schools, but also for-profit colleges, the increased causualization of the instruction, the growing reliance on student debt, and the rapid introduction of performance management schemes into assessment and evaluation. The ultimate consequences for the commodification of education along neoliberal lines is raised as well as the consequences for democratic politics.

The chapter “Questioning College” considers the stressors (economic and otherwise) that surround decisions about pursuing and paying for higher education. While attending college is now the norm for American emerging adults, some believe that higher education is essential yet inadequate for launching a career. Many graduate with crippling student loans that drastically limit their career options, yet they believe they have no chance of finding decent work without a degree. Others don’t pursue college, which has different implications for the path the rest of their lives may take. It’s a decision with far greater consequences than for previous generations, when many decent jobs were available to those without a college education, and yet another source of intense stress for many members of Generation Disaster.

Crisis rhetoric dominates the conversation about higher education. This chapter provides a few fictional stories about the future of colleges and universities facing today’s stresses. It introduces the threats that US higher education faces. These include internal threats, classified as those that come from conducting business as usual in the traditional model of producing a college education; environmental threats, broader economic changes in the world outside of higher education that make the current financial model for colleges and universities more challenging; and technological threats, that is, the expansion of online education. The chapter also discusses reasons apocalyptic predictions of disruption and bankruptcy for large segments of the US higher education system are overblown.

This chapter covers a period of rising wealth followed by abrupt decline. Between 1983 and 2007, real median household wealth rose by 70 percent, from $80,000 to $136,000 (in 2013 dollars). This increase disappeared completely, however, in the Great Recession; by 2010, median wealth had dropped by 40 percent, to $82,000, and it did not improve by 2013. The typical household of 2013 was no wealthier than the typical household of 1983. In addition, the distribution became markedly more unequal during the Great Recession; the richest 10 percent experienced a smaller reduction of 10 percent. For families in the middle, the most important asset was their home, but in 2013, fewer of them were homeowners and home values dropped for those who were. The declines in home ownership and home values accounted for most of the loss in wealth for middle-wealth families as a group.

The chapter examines the importance of redesigning colleges and universities facing an unsustainable financial situation—characterized by falling support along with rising tuition and student debt—and disruption from the digital revolution. It explores what such redesigning might entail, and encourages both faculty engagement and student inclusion in this process