Game of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student Debt

Description

College tuition and student debt levels have been rising at an alarming pace for at least two decades. These trends, coupled with an economy weakened by a major recession, have raised serious questions about whether we are headed for a major crisis, with borrowers defaulting on their loans in unprecedented numbers and taxpayers being forced to foot

Beth Akers is a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families. Matthew M. Chingos is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and the coauthor of Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities (Princeton). They both live in Washington, DC.

"In Game of Loans, we learn that only a quarter of first-year college students can predict their debt load within 10 percent of the correct amount, in large part because students are regularly overpromised financial aid in complex deals that then change year by year, just like the subprime mortgages that blew up in 2008."--Rana Foroohar, New York Review of Books "Successfully aimed at non-economists, [Game of Loans is] clearly written. [It is a] powerful antidote to the stereotypes and myths that have grown up around student loans."--David Wessel, Wall Street Journal "For many casual observers, the evidence and arguments presented in ... Game of Loans will be new. And if [you] read [the] book, that could help inform a public debate that's bound to stick around for some time."--Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education "One of the best things about Game of Loans is that the authors are cautious even in the way they prescribe various policy solutions... But the book's greatest contribution is its call for a more accurate description of the student loan problem in the first place... The authors also deserve credit for taking a good hard look at prevailing narratives, such as the one that holds that student loans are causing borrowers to delay major life decisions, such as buying homes or getting married, and building a case that many of those narratives are unfounded."--Jamaal Abdul-Alim, Diverse Magazine "For many casual observers, the evidence and arguments presented in ... Game of Loans will be new. And if [you] read [the] book, that could help inform a public debate that's bound to stick around for some time."--Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education "[Akers and Chingos] provide compelling evidence that paying for the costs of higher education is relatively feasible under the plethora of public financing options available."--AEIdeas "Influential."--Stephen Dash, Forbes.com "[Beth Akers and Matthew Chingos] pore over the data and find, in Game of Loans, that college prices and student debt loads are more affordable than the dominant political narrative would have us believe... Game of Loans includes a clear and concise analysis of college prices and student borrowing patterns over time, filling in holes in a debate often bereft of relevant and reliable data."--Jason Delisle, Education Next