Government-backed student loans are not a panacea for educational inequality or social ills. By examining student loans as a means of social control, Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence can provide novel ways to encapsulate debt-response patterns across cultures and geographies. This gentle, invisible violence creeps in via misrecognition, a…

This dissertation consists of three chapters that examine topics in the economics of education. Chapter 1 tests the impact of holding student loan debt on borrowers' post-schooling decisions, with a focus on how it changes the way they evaluate risks when choosing between jobs. Chapter 2 analyzes the impact of an expansion of public-school choice…

Given the skyrocketing costs of higher education, some borrowers -- particularly those with low incomes and those who were scammed by for-profit colleges -- genuinely need assistance. But portraying student loan forgiveness as a working-class issue is highly misleading. In fact, data on student borrowing shows that debt relief benefits few…

This study considers socially stratified take-up of income-driven repayment plans among federal student loan borrowers with high-debt payment obligations. Qualitative analyses of borrower complaints from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are used to document borrowers' experiences of administrative burden in the federal loan repayment…

Higher education took center stage during the Democratic presidential primaries, and congressional leaders in the party are calling for universal student loan forgiveness and tuition-free public college. The incoming Biden administration will thus face pressure to radically expand subsidies for higher education. Conservatives and moderates tend to…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore Black women in graduate school and their experiences with financing their education and perceptions about student loan debt. Findings from the experiences of six Black women enrolled in graduate programs within the College of Education highlight inequality in institutional funding and student…

The Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education Grant (TEACH Grant) Program awards grants to students who intend to teach, to help pay for their postsecondary education. TEACH Grants are available to eligible students who are enrolled at a school that participates in the TEACH Grant Program, in a program of study that the school…

Federal student loans help many college students access and complete postsecondary degrees that would not have been attainable otherwise. But years of well-intentioned policymaking have left the student loan system a complicated mess that is difficult for borrowers to navigate and leads to unfair and inefficient distributions of taxpayer dollars.…

This brief illustrates that while many borrowers in IDR [income-driven repayment] will repay their loans in full, those who do receive a discharge of remaining debt after 20 or 25 years of responsible payments may face an unaffordable tax liability because these discharged amounts are treated as taxable income under current law.

Growing reliance on student loans and repayment difficulties have raised concerns of a student debt crisis in the United States. However, little is known about the effects of student borrowing on human capital and long-run financial well-being. We use variation induced by recent expansions in federal loan limits, together with administrative…

In the summer of 2022, New America managed focus groups with almost 50 borrowers from across the country who reported holding federal student debt and defaulting on their loans before the COVID-19 pandemic. Focus group participants felt hopeless about their student loans, and they had good reason to feel this way. They entered the default system,…

Government-sponsored student loans have emerged over the decades as a primary method of financing post-secondary education across most North American jurisdictions. Despite this, the empirical literature examining the correlates of repayment difficulty and default in Canada has remained stagnant in recent years. This study taps into an…

Evidence shows that what students study matters as much as, if not more than, where they study. Program-level measures can provide important data on student outcomes, which will allow policymakers to hold institutions and programs that receive federal funding accountable. This fact sheet highlights some of the most frequently discussed measures…

The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act enabled lenders to offer a rehabilitation program to private student loan borrowers who have a reported default on their credit report. The lender may remove the reported default from credit reports if the borrower meets certain conditions. Congress included a provision in statute…

As of September 2018, almost half of the $859 billion in outstanding federal Direct Loans was being repaid by borrowers using income driven repayment (IDR) plans. Prior U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) work found that while these plans may ease the burden of student loan debt, they can carry high costs for the federal government. This…