Mother Jones: You followed these students for six years. What stood out to you?
Sara Goldrick-Rab: A lot of people talk about student loans with regard to how things are after you finish college, such as the challenges of repaying debt. But they don’t talk about the fact that people are so worried about debt even while they’re still in college. Watching people go without enough food to eat because they’re afraid to take out a loan, or decide to not go abroad or not hang out with friends because they’re so worried about what will happen—that to me says that we’ve changed what college is.
MJ: How so?
SGR: Well, it’s always been the case that you go to college and you get a fair bit of choice in deciding where you’re going to go, what you’re going to study and how you want to set that up. And the thing that distinguishes one choice from another is your ability—how intelligent you are and how hard you want to work. Increasingly, that’s not true. What distinguishes you and your choices is your income.
MJ: You say in the book that it’s sort of a failure of the American dream.
SGR: Well, it’s a betrayal. We tell people that the way to get ahead in life is through education, but then we only give them educational options that are unaffordable and end up shoving them backward. Imagine going to college and ending up with debt and no degree. That’s a betrayal.