NowComment
2-Pane Combined
Comments:
Full Summaries Sorted

"Experts debate whether student loans are a crisis for students and the economy"


0 General Document comments
0 Sentence and Paragraph comments
0 Image and Video comments


Brown Center Fellow Beth Akers recently participated in a lively debate over the controversial motion, “student loans are a crisis for students and the economy,” at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) annual conference. Akers was joined by Andrew Kelly, director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), in arguing against the motion, while Kevin Fudge, manager of Government Relations and Community Affairs at American Student Assistance, and Mark Huelsman, senior policy analyst at Demos, argued in favor. In the words of moderator John Donovan, the faceoff was “a battle of persuasion,” with the objective being to sway as many audience votes as possible.

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 1 0
No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 1, Sentence 1 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 1, Sentence 2 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 1, Sentence 3 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.

In the course of one hour, both sides were given opportunities to make arguments, to react to one another, and to respond to audience questions, and in that time all four participants made many compelling points.

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 2 0
No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 2, Sentence 1 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.

Huelsman argued succinctly that “The most important reason we face a crisis in the system is that a degree is far from guaranteed.” He went on to explain that four in ten low-income borrowers and four in ten black borrowers drop out of school, with the vast majority citing student loan debt as the number one reason for dropping out. Most concerning of all is the fact that drop-outs are four times more likely to default on their loans.

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 3 0
No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 3, Sentence 1 0
profile_photo
Nov 5
Audrey Hendarto Audrey Hendarto (Nov 05 2018 11:13AM) : This comment stood out to me because I hadn't considered how students that left college without a degree but still had a lot of student debt add to student debt statistics as well.
profile_photo
Jan 18
Dr. Bianca Popa Dr. Bianca Popa (Jan 18 2023 2:34PM) : Are student loans a crisis for students and the economy? Experts debate. But one thing is clear: student loans are a burden for many.We must find a way to make college more affordable [Edited]
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 3, Sentence 2 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 3, Sentence 3 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.

Huelsman’s teammate Kevin Fudge pointed to the impact of student loan debt on other lifetime outcomes as evidence of a crisis, stating that borrowers he worked with “consistently expressed concern about how their loans affected their ability to pay for housing and basic goods and services, let alone save for retirement.” This was one area of discussion that received a direct challenge from an opponent, with Andrew Kelly claiming that many arguments about the effect of student debt on home ownership mistake correlation for causation.

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 4 0
No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 4, Sentence 1 0
profile_photo
Nov 5
Audrey Hendarto Audrey Hendarto (Nov 05 2018 11:16AM) : This quote was more in line with the previous research I did on student loans because of how it supports that the housing market is also being affected by student debt
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 4, Sentence 2 0
profile_photo
Nov 5
Audrey Hendarto Audrey Hendarto (Nov 05 2018 11:18AM) : This line made me rethink a point in my argument that the student loan crisis is harming the housing market because I have no causation statistics despite the fact that I have looked at numbers correlating the housing and student loan crisis

In responding to her opponents, Akers argued repeatedly that the conclusion that there is a student debt crisis is the result of consistently making mistakes in logic, such as comparing a stock of lifetime debt to a flowof annual income. For more on this common error, see Akers and Chingos’s 2014 report on the topic.

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 5 0
No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 5, Sentence 1 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 5, Sentence 2 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.

For his part, Andrew Kelly focused largely on the consequences of referring to a student debt crisis, arguing that, “If we define this as a debt problem it leads us to a place where our object is to lower debt loads, which leads to all sorts of bad policy like proposals to refinance loans that deliver large subsidies to people who are having no trouble paying loans back.”

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 6 0
profile_photo
Nov 5
Audrey Hendarto Audrey Hendarto (Nov 05 2018 11:22AM) : My previous argument was more about changing the policies for paying for student debt and less about lowering the cost. I had not considered how defining this problem might lead to bad policy.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 6, Sentence 1 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.

Akers touched on another potential consequence of the “crisis” rhetoric in saying, “It’s critically important that low-income students continue to have access to the benefits afforded by higher education. It makes me very scared to think that we’re going to continue to talk about debt in this way and potentially reduce the opportunities that low-income students have.”

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 7 0
No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 7, Sentence 1 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 7, Sentence 2 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.

While the exchange between sides was at times heated, several areas of consensus emerged throughout the conversation as well. All four participants agreed that undeniably, some student loan borrowers are struggling tremendously. While Huelsman and Fudge pointed to this fact as evidence of a crisis—a crisis that exists among a certain, vulnerable group of borrowers—that demands addressing, Akers and Kelly argued that these individual crises should not be confused for a macro crisis. Both sides also concurred that a crisis of information exists in the higher education and student loan markets. This is a problem that Akers has specifically investigated in prior research and argues is in dire need of fixing.

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 8 0
No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 8, Sentence 1 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 8, Sentence 2 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 8, Sentence 3 0
profile_photo
Nov 5
Audrey Hendarto Audrey Hendarto (Nov 05 2018 11:24AM) : Although my perspective is more in line with defining the student loan crisis, I think that the opposing side makes a valid point that individual cases should not be used to determine the extent of a problem
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 8, Sentence 4 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 8, Sentence 5 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.

Despite some degree of consensus, these two sides were ultimately arguing against one another. So, who won? Based on the number of votes that were swayed between an initial vote before the debate and a final vote after the closing statements, the Akers/Kelly team was declared victorious. Not only did they convince 16 percent of the audience to change its vote, they also swayed the majority, with 57 percent of the audience ultimately agreeing that “student loans are not a crisis for students and the economy.”

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 9 0
No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 9, Sentence 1 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 9, Sentence 2 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 9, Sentence 3 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 9, Sentence 4 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.

Related Books

New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 10 0
No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.
New Thinking Partner Conversation New Conversation
Paragraph 10, Sentence 1 0
No sentence-level conversations. Start one.

DMU Timestamp: November 02, 2018 17:13

General Document Comments 0
New Thinking Partner Conversation Start a new Document-level conversation

Image
0 comments, 0 areas
add area
add comment
change display
Video
add comment

Quickstart: Commenting and Sharing

How to Comment
  • Click icons on the left to see existing comments.
  • Desktop/Laptop: double-click any text, highlight a section of an image, or add a comment while a video is playing to start a new conversation.
    Tablet/Phone: single click then click on the "Start One" link (look right or below).
  • Click "Reply" on a comment to join the conversation.
How to Share Documents
  1. "Upload" a new document.
  2. "Invite" others to it.

Logging in, please wait... Blue_on_grey_spinner