Arrested Development: Epistemic Carcerality and the Student Loan Crisis

• In Event: Humanizing Higher Education: Ethics and Institutional Power

Abstract

This paper examines the epistemic carcerality of the U.S. student loan crisis, showing how debt-financed higher education has shackled millions in oppressive public-private debts while contributing to and generating new modes of domination. I argue that student debt represents (1) an exploitation of educational needs; (2) a formative injustice that impedes the adulthood transition; and a (3) carceral logic that enacts racial and financialized punishment and extraction. I make a case why higher education today is a need and why the state has an obligation to meet it. I then show why debt-financed higher education is a woefully unjust and carceral way to meet these needs. I cite findings that show how students feel coerced to borrow, delay significant life choices due to high debt burdens and report debt-related stress and punitive repayment plans which force borrowers to decide between paying down debt and providing for their own essential needs.

Author

• Naomi Simmons-Thorne, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign