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 …

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 …