2025-01-10
27 分钟This is in conversation from Apple News.
I'm Shemitah Basu.
Today, America's big polarizing student debt problem.
About two decades ago, Ryan Liebenthal graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
This was 2005 and I had something like $21,000 of debt.
A few years after graduating, Ryan decided that she wanted more out of her life and career.
So she applied for a graduate journalism program at New York University.
It was expensive, but they offered me.
A one semester tuition scholarship and they encouraged me to take out loans.
She got her master's degree in 2010 and left NYU with more than $100,000 of debt.
Her first job as a fact checker paid about $31,000 a year.
I was like terribly depressed about it and I would just be like, this is just, it's just a black hole.
I will never get out of this.
I will never have a house.
I will never be able to have children.
I felt worthless.
Today, 45 million Americans, or about 1 in 6 adults, owe $1.7 trillion in student loan debt.
That's millions of people carrying around the kinds of fears and anxieties Ryan did for so long.
So she decided to write about it.
Her book is called Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis.