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?”

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