Prof. Shermer tells us how student loans were designed as a financial product, rather than a guarantee for higher education. This history, she explains, has made all the financial difference to students, their families and our country, and has created the current crisis.     

As of the production of this podcast episode, America's student debt burden stood at $1.73 trillion! Do the math, and you'll note that this figure is not an insignificant percentage of our GDP. While this debt keeps on climbing, no one in government is really rushing to fix the problem. And here is something intriguing: this is a decades-old problem. That's right! As Professor Shermer tells it, complaints about student debts were voiced as far back as 50 years ago. As the complaints became more vocal in the 1990s, the Clinton Administration almost embarked on major changes to our student debt system. But as politics go, it was not to be! Blazing voices of students during the Occupy Movement in the Great Recession brought national news coverage to the debt crisis. Regardless, student debt and its burden have continued climbing unabated.     

Professor Elizabeth T. Shermer, Loyola University Chicago, is the author of Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt (also available on Amazon). In this episode, she explains how we got here.  

I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about our country's student debt crisis. 

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