BONUS: Student Debt and Class Struggle in the U.S.

A teach-in organized by the Socialist Party of Michigan and conducted by Media Cyphers host Andy Argo.

 

"Recently President Biden unveiled a plan to provide a small amount of student debt relief for people in the U.S. Much ink has been spent by those in the corporate media alternatively praising these measures and decrying them as "student debt Socialism." However, given a global context where many other countries provide free higher education, it is worth asking why the working class in the United States is subjected to student debt in the first place.

 

Join the Socialist Party of Michigan as we trace the history of student debt in the United States and the very intentional aims of the capitalist class to stratify and restrict access to education across class lines. We will discuss how college education in the U.S. went from relatively affordable to prohibitively expensive, and the political reasons behind tying generations of students to consistent debt peonage.

 

We will also look more broadly at how this ties into the consistent decades long assault to dismantle public education and to impose more ideological hegemony on campus- and how all this comes together in an attempt to temper student activism and organizing."

 

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

 

Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education by Henry A. Giroux  

 

The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U.S. Higher Education by Nicholas D. Hartlep (Editor), Lucille L.T. Eckrich (Editor), Brandon O. Hensley (Editor) 

Education and Capitalism: Struggles For Learning and Liberation edited by Sarah Knopp and Jeff Bale

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

 

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank

 

Joe Biden’s Role in Creating the Student Debt Crisis Stretches Back to the 1970s The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/07/joe-biden-student-loans/

The Origin of Student Debt: Reagan Adviser Warned Free College Would Create a Dangerous “Educated Proletariat” The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/