Student Loans Are Culture

What does it mean to think of student loans as culture? First off, it means that we can think of them as something that’s changeable. Because as much as we’ve come to think of massive piles of debt as “just the way it is” for a broad swath of people (and more and more every year), there’s nothing inevitable about student loans. Our status quo doesn’t have to be saddling young adults (and/or their parents, and/or their grandparents) with albatrosses of debt, simply to obtain the credentials that (at least theoretically) put someone on track to financial security. But if significant student debt isn’t our status quo… what could be?

Dominique Baker is one of my favorite thinkers on higher ed in general and the topic of student loans in particular — and we’re answering all your student-loan-culture questions, from “why can’t endowments just pay for all of this” to “how do I convince my beloved partner that it’s okay for us to share their student loan obligations?”

Show Notes:

• My Culture Study interview with Dominique Baker all about her most recent research re: the educational background of journalists writing about student loans

• Dominique Baker on Work Appropriate, giving advice on navigating the broken space of higher ed (one of our most beloved episodes, fwiw)

• I briefly mention the work I did writing about student loans at BuzzFeed News — here’s the big feature I did on the broken state of Public Service Loan Forgiveness, better known as PSLF

• My piece on what’s missing from most conversations about student loan forgiveness: any acknowledgment of wealth

• The podcast interview I’ve sent to anyone who doesn’t have student loans and wants to grasp the bigger picture (this also made me understand my own place in the system so much better): Tressie McMillan Cottom and Louis Seamster on The Ezra Klein Show. I’ll never shut up about this interview.

• Cottom’s seminal work on deeply exploitative for-profit colleges and the generation of student debt

• A direct link to Dominique’s work

We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help)

• Sephora Teens and teen skincare/makeup culture

• How we talk about the royals today

• Beyond Ballerina Farm [and is there such a thing as too much tradwife discourse? How do we critique but also not celebritize?]

• WHAT CELEBRITY IMAGE SHOULD WE UNPACK NEXT?

• Online shopping culture, including but not limited to people’s reliance on reviews and/or compulsion to leave reviews

• The romance novel boom

• Anything you need advice on!

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

For today’s discussion: How did this conversation shift or texture your thinking about higher ed and student loans?

• Join the ranks of paid subscribers and get bonus content, access to the discussion threads, ad-free episodes, and the knowledge that you're supporting an indie pod trying to make its way in the world.
• Got a question to submit, a prompt for Ask Anne Anything, or an idea for a future episode? Tell us here.
• Catch up on everything else happening in the Culture Study universe here.
• Transcripts will be available here within 24 hours of publishing.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.