Law Commons^™

The Economics Of American Higher Education In The New Gilded Age, Paul Campos

Utah Law Review

Student debt is a function of three factors: the cost of higher education, the extent to which that cost is subsidized through sources other than students and their families, and the percentage of nonsubsidized revenue that is supplied via loans rather than out-of-pocket payments.

The first factor is a product of how much money colleges and universities choose to spend. The second is determined by total value of the many sources of subsidization upon which higher education draws. The third is a function of the relative wealth or poverty of the people who make up the student bodies at American …

Improvident Student Lending, Joseph Sanders, Vijay Raghavan

Utah Law Review

The idea that lending without regard to ability to repay should be illegal is not particularly new, but it gained purchase in recent years with the rapid growth of high-cost mortgage loans. In the late 1990s, law enforcement and private litigants began attacking predatory mortgage lenders on the grounds they were making loans that borrowers could not afford. Both before and after the financial crisis of 2008, state and federal legislators imposed reforms on the mortgage market that provided relief to borrowers whose lenders failed to determine whether they had sufficient income to afford their monthly mortgage payments.

This Article …

The Case For More Debt: Expanding College Affordability By Expanding Income-Driven Repayment, John R. Brooks

Utah Law Review

One of the most important—but least discussed—legislative and regulatory accomplishments of the Obama administration was the reform and expansion of income-driven repayment (“IDR”) for federal student loans. By 2016, anyone with a federal student loan—old or new—could choose to cap their monthly student loan payments to 10 percent of their discretionary income (after a large exemption) and have any unpaid balances forgiven after a minimum of ten, twenty, or twenty-five years of repayment, depending on the plan. IDR has the potential to effect a massive change in how the United States pays for higher education. At its core, the promise …

Federal Student Aid: Can We Solve A Problem We Do Not Understand?, Deanne Loonin, Julie Margetta Morgan

Utah Law Review

At over $1 trillion, with more than 8 million borrowers in default, the federal student loan program is in trouble. There is no question that policymakers will do their best to fix it in the coming years. The only question is whether they will have the evidence they need to make informed judgments about what ails our student loan program, and what can cure it.

In the coming years, advocates, policymakers, and researchers should focus on gathering data and information on all possible causes of the failures in the student loan program. As the previous Part describes, the public has …

The Narrative And Rhetoric Of Student Debt, Jonathan D. Glater

Utah Law Review

The swirl of concerns about and criticisms of the cost of higher education and the debt burdens taken on by students masks a deeper confusion over the goals student aid should pursue and over reforms to enable achievement of those goals. This Article explores how the rhetoric used in public discussion of college cost and student borrowing can get in the way of what would be a difficult but critically important debate over goals. Higher education is a personal, private “investment” that must be “worth it” to the student; student “aid,” flexible loan repayment plans, even debt forgiveness, all aim …

Broken Promises: How Debt-Financed Higher Education Rewrote America’S Social Contract And Fueled A Quiet Crisis, Seth Frotman

Utah Law Review

The U.S. student loan market stands at $1.5 trillion—the second largest consumer debt market in the country. Despite the vast size of this market and the far-reaching spillover effects of student loan debt on individuals and communities, the American higher education system increasingly relies on debt financing as the predominant mechanism by which American families pay for college. Furthermore, student loans still lack a comprehensive twenty-first century consumer protection infrastructure. Researchers and policymakers are only now beginning to acknowledge the threat runaway student debt poses to the American social contract - even as millions of borrowers across the country struggle …