Full Description
Capturing the voices of Americans living with student debt in the United States, this collection critiques the neoliberal interest-driven, debt-based system of U.S. higher education and offers alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and the corporatized university. Grounded in an understanding of the historical and political economic context, this book offers auto-ethnographic experiences of living in debt, and analyzes alternatives to the current system. Chapter authors address real questions such as, Do collegians overestimate the economic value of going to college? and How does the monetary system that student loans are part of operate? Pinpointing how developments in the political economy are accountable for students' university experiences, this book provides an authoritative contribution to research in the fields of educational foundations and higher education policy and finance.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
Alan M. Collinge
Preface
Nicholas D. Hartlep, Lucille L. T. Eckrich, and Brandon O. Hensley
Acknowledgments
PART I - Critical Perspectives on Financing Higher Education in the United States
Financing Higher Education in the United States: An Historical Overview of Loans in Federal Financial Aid Policy
Enyu Zhou and Pilar Mendoza
Bankruptcy Means-Testing, Austerity Measures, and Student Loan Debt
Linda Elizabeth Coco
African American Student Loan Debt: Deferring the Dream of Higher Education
Cynthia D. Levy
Monetary Critique and Student Debt
Lucille L. T. Eckrich
PART II -The Debt That Won't Go Away: Stories of Non-Dischargeable Student Debt
The Rise of the Adjuncts: Neoliberalism Invades the Professoriate
Amy E. Swain
"BFAMFAPhD": An Adjunct Professor's Personal Experience With Student Debt Long After Leaving Graduate School
Celeste M. Walker
Debt(s) We Can't Walk Out On: National Adjunct Walkout Day, Complicity, and the Neoliberal Threat to Social Movements in the Academy
Brandon O. Hensley
Misplaced Faith in the American Dream: Buried in Debt in the Catacombs of the Ivory Tower
Brian R. Horn
An Adjunct Professor's Communication Barriers With Neoliberal Student Debt Collectors
Antonio L. Ellis
"Golden Years" in the Red: Student Loan Debt as Economic Slavery
Kay Ann Taylor
Should I Go Back to College?
Melissa A. Del Rio
PART III - Alternatives to American Neoliberal Financing of Higher Education
Free Tuition: Prospects for Extending Free Schooling Into the Postsecondary Years
James C. Palmer and Melissa R. Pitcock
"Work Colleges" as an Alternative to Student Loan Debt
Nicholas D. Hartlep and Diane R. Dean
It Takes More Than a Village, It Takes a Nation
Daniel A. Collier, T. Jameson Brewer, P.S. Myers, and Allison Witt
Monetary Transformation and Public Education
Lucille L. T. Eckrich
Reflections on the Future: Setting the Agenda for a Post-Neoliberal U.S. Higher Education
Nicholas D. Hartlep, Brandon O. Hensley, and Lucille L. T. Eckrich
List of Contributors
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
