The U.S. Student Loan Debt Crisis: State Crime or State-Produced Harm?

Abstract

The unprecedented US$1.64 trillion level of student loan debt in the United States can be linked to the neoliberal process of privatization of higher education. But is the U.S. student loan debt crisis a state crime? This article examines the social harm student loan debt has caused; proposes an explanation for the shift to debt-financed, commodified public higher education; reveals government disinvestment in public higher education; details the transition of public higher education as a public good to higher education as a commodity financed with debt; and describes Obama administration reforms and De Vos/Trump administration attempts at policy rollback and further privatization. I situate the U.S. student loan debt crisis case in recent debates about crime, social harm, and zemiology.

‘Did the NFL start caring about women a lot more after Ray Rice? Probably not’: White-collar deviance and violence against women in racial capitalist sport

“…Zemiological understandings of white collar crime and state-corporate crime have led to analyses of all sorts of behaviours and practices, spanning diverse industries and actors (Tombs, 2018). These include the privatizing of higher education and creation of the student loan crisis (Carlson, 2020), corporations withholding information from environmental regulators and the public (Bleakley, 2020), and the labour exploitation of professional wrestlers (Corteen, 2018), among many others.…”

State Crime, Native Americans and COVID-19

“…Others use the term state-produced harm rather than state crime to describe policies and practices that may not be overtly illegal but perhaps should be, due to the degree to which they are injurious (Tombs 2018;Carlson 2020). A harms focus can be useful in identifying how those in power often engage in acts of omission (Rothe 2020), as is the case with the US and its relationship to AI/NA peoples.…”

Debt Relief Reforms are not Enough to Alter the Relations of Inequality and Harm Reproduction: The Case of Educational Debt and the Need for Structural Reconstruction

“…By June 30, 2019, this debt stood at more than US$1.6 trillion—more than doubling the US$720 billion debt total only one decade earlier. As Susan Carlson ( 2020 ) demonstrated recently, the unprecedented level of higher education debt and the intergenerational social harm that it generates may be linked to state-routinized policies of neoliberalism, disinvestment in the commons, and privatization. These fiscal policies of austerity and the shift away from higher education as a government-financial public good to higher education as a commodity financed by individual debt began in the early 1980s, when the contradictions of stagflation—high inflation and high unemployment—that emerged from the oil crises in the 1970s resulted in a combination of lower demand and lower commodity prices, as well as large deficits in the payment balance accounts of several developing and developed countries.…”