From Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis, which will be published this month by Dey Street.
At the end of Jordan Long’s sophomore year at Morehouse—a historically black private college in Atlanta—he had taken stock of his financial situation and come to a startling realization. He had already racked up more than $60,000 in student debt, and he was on track to graduate with $150,000 or more, an almost unimaginable sum, split among him and the several family members who had taken out loans on his behalf. He took an afternoon to reflect, and then let the school know he wouldn’t be returning.
Two years later, on the day Jordan should have graduated from Morehouse, he watched from home as a man named Robert F. Smith stepped up to the dais to deliver words of advice and encouragement to the graduates. Smith had founded his own private-equity firm and become a billionaire—he was the wealthiest black man in America—so he was well poised to offer his counsel on life after college. “We all have the responsibility to liberate others so that they can become their best selves,” Smith said. “We need you to become the C-suite executives.” Then he dropped the bombshell. He would be making a gift to the graduating class: paying off the entirety of their student loans.
Jordan couldn’t believe his bad luck.
College students like him—with the talent but not the wealth to make their way through America’s elite private institutions—are urged to follow their dreams as far as they can go and to take out student loans if they must. And many do. It’s “good debt,” after all. At the same time, they must never for an instant forget that they’re on the hook for it, even if their degree, in spite of all the lofty rhetoric, doesn’t land them in the C suite—as it most likely will not.
Today, some forty-five million Americans find themselves in the position Jordan was in during his sophomore year. Collectively, they hold $1.7 trillion in student debt, with little hope of paying off their portion without someone like Smith swooping in. The system is broken.
A central question of higher education: What and whom is it for? This is a question we no longer tend to ask of elementary or even secondary schooling: we take it for granted that education is a necessary part of a child’s development into young adulthood. It is for everyone—not only a right but a requirement. At the same time, it is not for anything in particular beyond the general responsibility to provide children with the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to grow into functioning adults.
But as high school became compulsory in the middle of the twentieth century, the high school diploma lost its edge. Employability shifted up the educational bracket. Whereas a college diploma had once conferred elite status, the mark of prestige, it became a quotidian acquisition. By the end of the twentieth century, a degree was a prerequisite for most white-collar positions.
We must unlearn the notion that an education is the necessary means to a job, wealth, and socioeconomic standing. There is nothing wrong with learning skills for work. But teaching them should be the task of employers, job-training programs, specialized (ideally public) vocational and professional programs. Bachelor’s degrees should not stand in for workforce development. A college education should be about learning—a time for exploring ideas and finding what it means to be a member of society. And that opportunity should be available to everyone.
One major reason why federal funding for higher education has proved so hard to come by—the reason Jordan and many other students abandon their degrees—is that a certain breed of American legislator (and constituent) fears it is a precursor to “federal control” of education. The provision of education is not enumerated in the Constitution, they say, and so it should not be a responsibility of the federal government but rather a responsibility for state and local governments to assume.
The glaring problem with this philosophy is that it doesn’t work. Before the middle of the twentieth century, state and local government often did not pick up the baton. And in the absence of strong federal involvement in education, standards varied so widely that the quality represented by a college diploma was nearly impossible to judge on its face. Until the latter part of the twentieth century, education in America was a hodgepodge of mostly low-quality offerings, particularly for students from the lower rungs of the economy.
As higher education developed along the lines established by wealthy philanthropists and free-market economic priorities, the enterprise came to be seen as an individualist affair rather than a cooperative one. Students were market actors, consumers, in pursuit of a financial good that would benefit them personally; their education might benefit the country as well, but only incidentally.
The most egregious consequence of this laissez-faire approach is the for-profit higher-education institution. There is simply no reason that shoddy proprietary schools like the University of Phoenix should profit from virtually limitless federal student loans, which come with very few strings attached and minimal accountability.
For-profiteers like to claim that they deserve their subsidized money because, unlike nonprofit and public institutions, they pay taxes on their revenue. As well they should! In fact, what they pay taxes on is almost exclusively tax-funded money. They are merely rendering back unto Caesar the very smallest portion of what was already Caesar’s to begin with. We should have neither an obligation to nor an interest in subsidizing them. And to do so on the backs of their students is unconscionable. Throw the proprietary schools into the waters of their beloved free market and let them sink or swim on their own.
It should come as no surprise that this led to a distribution of education and its benefits that highly privileges the wealthy and leaves the poor mostly hung out to dry.
Why should Harvard and Yale benefit to such a great degree from the largesse of the taxpayer via Pell Grants and student loans? According to Federal Student Aid, nonprofit private institutions receive more than one third of all federal grant and loan disbursements, despite enrolling only one sixth of all undergraduate students. If these schools are going to receive such heavy federal investment, they should be made public. Private colleges and universities should be given an option: either stop accepting public funds or stop being private.
It’s unlikely that Harvard or Yale, which could afford the hit, would take the bait. They would remain private and exclusive—perhaps even more so. And undoubtedly, some small private colleges without huge endowments would choose to close altogether rather than become public. Critics would cry out about the tiering of American education; private schools would be the exclusive province of wealthy elites, with everyone else relegated to state universities. But this is already the case. Wealthy students are much more likely than poor ones to attend elite schools. If their parents are in the top 1 percent of earners, they are 50 percent more likely to go to Harvard than those who scored just as well on the SAT. At Georgetown, their odds are nearly triple. (Some public universities tend to skew in the opposite direction.) Legacy applicants make up a tenth to a quarter of college admissions at top schools—at Harvard, a third. Meanwhile, only 16 percent of Harvard’s 2025 freshmen are black.
The Ivy League will always be a machine for burnishing the status of those who don’t really need it in the first place. But imagine what could be done with all the taxpayer money we currently use to subsidize the Ivy League. Imagine how much more we could do for UC Berkeley or Boise State University. Imagine if every graduating high school senior had a quality college or university within commuting distance of home.
In the language so dear to the cheerleaders of student aid: government needs to invest more in the education of its citizens if it wants to reap the benefits of their increased productivity. And not by funneling taxpayer funds to elite private schools or third-rate for-profit universities regulated with all the strength of a friendship bracelet, but through public provision. Let us simply fund community colleges and public vocational institutions—and fund them generously. Let us insist that states substantially match federal dollars and make them commit to keeping tuition low or nonexistent.
This is not merely a question of the economic health of our society. It’s also about equity—and racial, economic, and gender justice. For too long, we have thrown the most marginalized members of our society to the wolves of profit and debt, and it’s time to truly level the playing field.
