#205 The History of Student Debt w/ Ellie Shermer
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2021
⏱️ 76 minutes
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Summary
According to the US Department of Education, 45 million Americans collectively owe $1.7 billion in total student loan debt. While the weight of student loans has increased substantially in the 21st century, the history of student debt and the institutions that facilitate it is a much longer story than you probably expect. Ellie Shermer joins us to talk about her new book Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in Debt (Harvard, 2021), why student debt may be bad for all of us, and what we might do to alleviate student debt and fix higher education moving forward.
Dr. Elizabeth Tandy Shermer is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. Her previous books include Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). You can follow her on twitter at @ETShermer.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is in the loop, the Legion of Osiris Podcasts. |
| 0:03.9 | Osiris is creating a community that connects people like you with live experiences and podcasts |
| 0:08.9 | about artists and topics you love. |
| 0:11.6 | Get in the loop at Osirispod.com. |
| 0:20.2 | I'm Ben Sawyer, and this is the Road to Now. |
| 0:24.3 | Ellie Shermer is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. |
| 0:29.5 | And today we are talking about the history of student debt. |
| 0:33.7 | She has a new book that's just come out from Harvard University Press. |
| 0:37.6 | It's called Indentured Students, How Government Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in Debt. |
| 0:44.2 | It is a topic that is near and dear to, perhaps too close to some of our hearts. |
| 0:50.3 | And I met Ellie years ago at a conference and she was really dynamic. And when I saw this book |
| 0:56.6 | came out, I just said, will you please come on the road to now and talk about it? And so we made |
| 1:00.6 | this happen. And so we cover a lot here actually more than just student debt. We talk about the |
| 1:05.5 | reason college has gotten so expensive. We talk about government policy like so much in our modern life that we think is new and a expensive. We talk about government policy, like so much in our modern life that we think |
| 1:12.9 | is new and a recent development, student loans show that this has been going on for a long time, |
| 1:20.1 | long before it was the point where tens of millions of people are in $1.7 trillion in debt. |
| 1:27.1 | The foundations were there. Also, we're going to be |
| 1:30.1 | reminded once again that partisanship is not a new thing. So it's really excited about this |
| 1:37.4 | conversation. I hope you guys enjoy it. I just want to say one last thing before we close up |
| 1:41.7 | this intro. Just saw that W win carroll who is one of the |
| 1:45.3 | former students at mtsu who now is at university of oklahoma he tweeted that he's using one of our |
| 1:51.1 | episodes on his CV for us history guys if you're doing that thank you thanks to win and thanks |
... |
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