Why Are Student Loans Such a Catastrophe?

Today Nathan is joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell, author of The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe. Under pressure from progressive Democrats, Joe Biden recently agreed to continue a pause on student loan payments. There has been a great deal of debate over whether Biden should consider canceling large amounts of student debt outright. 

Mitchell has spent years studying every aspect of the student loan crisis. On this episode, he helps us better understand what the crisis is and how we got here. We discuss:

- What makes student loans a "catastrophe" to begin with, and why there needs to be some public policy solution 

- The mountain of human misery beneath the statistics, what life is actually like for people who can't pay their debts

- Why Josh thinks the establishment of Sallie Mae was one of the most disastrous trainwrecks in the history of Congressional legislation 

- How college financial advisers have misled students into thinking their degrees are more valuable than they actually are 

- The cases of people with over a million dollars in student debt, or those so old their Social Security checks are being garnished to pay their student loans

- How much of the crisis was created by Wall Street greed versus well-intentioned but disastrous public policy

- Whether a solution is just to make public colleges free, like public high schools 

Josh's Wall Street Journal article on borrowers who have crossed a million dollars in student debt is here. Read some Current Affairs coverage of student debt and the financing of higher education in these articles:

- Is Student Debt Cancellation Regressive? NO.

- Cancelling Student Debt Reduces The Racial Wealth Gap

- If You Want To Enact Free College, Cancel Student Debt Immediately

- The Taxonomy of Student Debt Arguments  

- Student Debt Forgiveness: Let's Do Some Math

- How Student Debt Is Worsening Gender and Racial Injustice

- The Case for Free College  

- What a Better Biden Would Say About Student Loan Debt