Available at: Your Local Bookstore or https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo244056598.html
Summary:
Exposes the forgotten origins of the student loan system, how politicians have attempted to fix it, and the life-altering damage borrowers face.
Student-loan horror stories are a dime a dozen. But students today are faced with a seemingly insurmountable paradox: Research consistently shows that the clearest viable option to financial stability is a college degree. But if and when Americans decide to pursue diplomas, student loan payments quickly follow, and even after securing full-time employment, many borrowers struggle to make ends meet for years. In Sunk Cost, journalist Jillian Berman explores how the nation’s student loan program went from a well-intentioned initiative aimed at helping low- and middle-income students afford college to one that traps borrowers in long-term debt.
Berman interviewed dozens of borrowers and policymakers and dug into the archives to unearth the true causes of the student loan problem. A couple of generations ago, policy makers generously subsidized Americans’ college educations because they knew it would be advantageous for the entire country: a more educated population meant better quality of life for all. But today, higher education is viewed as an individual goal, so students and their families are expected to be on the hook for it themselves. Berman explains how this enormous shift happened, which industries benefit from it, and what it means for college-going Americans today. She shares real-life stories of college graduates who are being crushed under some of the harshest consequences of the student loan system. These borrowers pursued higher education in hopes of a better life and yet some have been trapped in debt for decades, making it difficult to put food on the table, much less imagine a life beyond debt.
By connecting personal accounts to the policy history of student loans, Berman makes clear that if American society continues to push students toward higher education, but fails to truly subsidize it, the financial strain will become unbearable for all but the most privileged. The current system is broken, but Berman proposes that significant changes are possible, and will require political will from state lawmakers and Congress, along with a philosophical shift, to tackle one of the largest consumer finance challenges of our time.
Commentary:
Jillian Berman's Sunk Cost is, along with Ryann Liebenthal's Unburdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis, an excellent history and review of how the student lending system began with the GI Bill (and the flaws inherent even from the start) through the present. The attention paid to more recent efforts, both grassroots arising from the Occupy Wall Street movement and by various federal entities, is particularly excellent.
Despite including a few pages about changes over the last 50 years in how student loans are treated in bankruptcy, I am still hoping and waiting for an investigative journalist to eventually put similar time and effort into researching and writing more about this vital aspect of student loans. As a bankruptcy geek, I just really want to know what happened to Marie Brunner after she became the poster child for the draconian and cruel undue hardship test in bankruptcy.
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