/lit/ - Literature

>>15364982
Now at this point it might be asked "well why do the students take out these ridiculous loans"?

Now I could go and answer this through a long analysis of the whole system of credentialism, where you need a B.A. to get a job where a lesser degree was once needed; or I could argue that our whole culture is built on the idea that the proper life-path is one where you go through grade-school to high-school to College--and this is continually repeated in our art and culture so that someone with only a high-school education is persistantly stigmatized. But these are only surface level critiques.

A better way to think about the problem for the student is to think of it as the modern form of indentured servitude, to which our current system of student debt is highly analogous.

Just as indentured servants would sign up for a future life of a few years of slavery in exchange for passage to America, so too do current prospective college students sign up for a few years of wage-slavery in exchange for a few years on pleasure island and a piece of paper proving they are educated. And just as indentured servitude often extended the slavery for years beyond what was initially contracted, so too does the interest on the student loans allow the loan companies to extend the wage-slavery of its targets for years and years. The fact that you cannot declare bankruptcy is the real enforcement condition of this new slavery, because it closes the easy-option out, which would have forced the loan companies to evaluate who was a good candidate for higher education and who is not.

The arguments that the current system of student loans is actually JUST (which we all know are bullshit) can also be applied to Indentured servitude in defence of the claim that this ALSO was just. Whenever you hear an argument in favor of the justice of our current college loan system, you ought to ask yourself if this argument also would apply to the policy of indentured servitude.

Ultimately, just as we wouldn't expect eighteen year olds to be competant judges of when it it is a good idea to sell oneself into slavery, we should not expect eighteen year-olds to be competant judges of what their future earning potential will be, particularily when the free-market cannot due its job due to corrupt government policy.