Support for higher education is a known and well-documented venue for financial transfers within families, but practices of family support beyond college are less understood. Drawing on interviews with recent master's degrees recipients who have student debt, I find key class differences in the process and forms of family financial assistance for…

Despite substantial investments in financial aid programs, the available aid often falls short of covering the total cost of attendance (Hanson, 2023). Today, college expenses represent 30% of the annual median family income, pushing many students to rely on loans to finance their education (US Census Bureau, 2023). Among student loan borrowers,…

The Biden Administration has taken numerous actions to address student loan debt. These actions have ranged in scope (both in terms of the borrower populations affected and associated modification costs), their rationales, and the avenues through which they were taken (e.g., formal rulemaking procedures, issuance of guidance). One effect of these…

The 'Higher Education Policy Statement and Reform Consultation' was launched in February 2022 with responses required by May 2022. This online consultation included 16 closed questions, which have been analysed quantitatively, and 29 open text boxes, which have been analysed qualitatively and the frequency of themes summarised quantitatively. The…

Education-job match is often associated with enhanced well-being and career satisfaction, although existing research suggests that arts college graduates are less likely to experience education-job match than graduates of other disciplines. As research also increasingly suggests that student loan debt may influence college graduates' access to…

The authors of this article represent an interdisciplinary team that includes a literacy teacher educator, a high school economics teacher, a community-based math educator, and a math teacher educator. Responding to the needs and building from the strengths of the local community, we co-designed with youth a community-based FLE workshop that…

Rising federal debt threatens to reduce the growth of the economy, people's living standards, wages, and the standard of living. A policy solution needs to respect many constraints, most importantly, that it is seen as fair--both within generations and across generations. This article addresses concepts of fairness and their application to…

Institutional debt, also referred to as direct-to-school debt, is debt owed by students to their college or university for unpaid tuition, fees, room and board, education benefit overpayments, or fines. Unpaid tuition is the most common debt and can arise if a student enrolled with the expectation of aid that did not come through, or if a student…

Background/Context: Student loans reflect a larger shift in U.S. society in which people are forced to go into debt for basic needs. Student loan debt in the United States has been recognized as a political economic crisis that disproportionately devastates Black people. Scholars have statistically reported on racialized and gendered…

Most colleges and universities help millions of Americans earn a degree or diploma to lead to economic security and a better life. In the wake of the Great Recession, it was revealed that too many for-profit colleges -- by enrolling hundreds of thousands of students -- sought to take advantage of the federal financial aid system to make windfall…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the role of a debt mitigation program as an incentive for adult student reengagement and to ascertain students' perceptions of the institution after reenrolling in college via the program. The debt mitigation program was the first in the nation to forgive past-due student institutional debt,…

The current study examined hindering factors of 2-year community college students' vertical transfer to 4-year colleges. Rational choice theory guided the study and provided the scope of the problem, which is community college students' apprehension about vertically transferring to 4-year colleges. A quantitative Likert-scale survey, which…

As college tuition rises nationwide, policy efforts to reduce these costs are increasingly focused at the 2-year level. However, it is not fully known whether increased access to college increases degree attainment. Compared to observationally equivalent peers who enroll in 4-year institutions, 2-year enrollees may face a decreased likelihood of…

Student borrowing is a major higher education public policy issue, with students in both England and the United States increasingly relying on loans to finance postsecondary education. Our paper examines prospective higher education students' attitudes towards debt in England and the United States. It exploits a unique dataset which allows us to…

Purpose: Despite the introduction of structural reforms to the students' loan scheme (SLS) in Ghana's higher education sector, patronage is still low. This paper aims to examine the complexity of technological and behavioural factors underpinning the low rate of students' loan adoption in Ghana. It further contributes to the body of knowledge by…