Student Loan Debt as a "Wicked Problem": Moving from Pessimism to Possibility and Hell to Hope

The majority of what gets written about student loan debt ties rapidly rising tuition to state disinvestment, cost disease, among other forces that are internal or external to the academy. The neoliberal regime of truth is that a college education is worth incurring student loan debt. Human capital is the motif. The financial "payoff" is seen as a logical reason to go to college and to "invest" in one's future. This book offers a counter-perspective. The editor of this volume places the debt crisis within a "Wicked Problem" framework to help explain why the student debt crisis in U.S. Higher Education doesn't seem to be getting better despite valiant attempts to do so. The complexity of higher education financing and policy is immense, and it is no coincidence that change is slow. The chapters in this book will point out that while the main culprit for why students continue to graduate with more and more student loan debt is not individual choice, but rather evidence of the neoliberal ecosystem of higher education, itself.