An urgent investigation of student debt in America revealing the
corrupt systems, rotten policies, and bad actors that have created a
$1.7 trillion crisis.
College costs more
today than ever and is worth less. Tuition at public colleges has
more than tripled in the past 50 years. Over the same period student
debt has grown from virtually nothing to more than $1.7 trillion,
second only to home mortgages.
Skyrocketing
student-loan burdens are leading an entire generation to put off the
traditional milestones of adulthood: buying homes, getting married,
starting families, and saving for retirement. The burden weighs
heavier on women and black Americans, and with almost 10 percent of
student debtors now over the age of 60, it is a crisis no longer
limited to the young.
Ryann Liebenthal’s
Burdened tells the maddening story of how the power plays of
legislators and presidents, the commodification of higher ed, and the
rapacious practices of for-profit colleges and private lenders have
created today’s student-debt lava pit.
As the notion of
student-loan cancellation percolates into the political mainstream,
Liebenthal offers a deeply researched, sweeping narrative of our
broken system. Rather than give in to despair, she boldly charts a
way out, offering hopeful solutions to this seemingly unfixable
problem.
