22: The Debt Sentence - Part 1: Sputnik, Spending, Economic Voodoo and the Seeds of a Student Loan Empire

In the 1950s, the United States made a monumental achievement in education with the transformation of its system from one that was inaccessible to those of lower and middle incomes into one that allowed anyone with the drive and determination to succeed. This incredible change culminated in the monumental achievement of Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind, just a decade after it had begun.

However, since then, Higher Education has been repurposed as a debtor's prison, weighing down not just the young but their parents, and saddling all living generations with debt until they die.

Take a trip from the beginning and through the Seventies to understand the promise of student loans and the mechanisms put in place to create an American saga that begins with good intentions and ends, as so many stories do in this country, with the federal government holding a trillion-dollar bag of other people's money.

 

Further information and sources:

• Blame student loans on Sputnik: How the 1957 launch of a Soviet rocket inspired the government to overhaul education - Ayelet Sheffey
• Student Loan History - New America
• A Look Into the History of Student Loans - Jeff Gitlen
• The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe - Josh Mitchell
•  History of American Higher Education - Josh R. Thelin