Student Loan redux

[Dave Haan]

Something worth consideration, even if it is a tortured metaphor:
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/student-loans-as-the-new-indentured-servitude/

... Jeffrey Williams, in Dissent Magazine, wrote Student Debt and The Spirit of Indenture, in which he provocatively referred to student loans as the new form of indentured servitude.
Why is this the new form of indentured servitude? Williams gives some reasons: The prevalence of this debt, especially among the young and the poor/working classes, the transformation from a rounding error amount to a significant burden amount over the past 30 years, the length of term, the idea of mobility and transport to a job, debt secured not by property but by personhood, and limited legal recourse. All these characteristics are similar. The limited legal recourse is noteworthy here, since unlike most debt, it isnt dischargeable under bankruptcy, thus it doesnt have a natural protection for the consumer receiving credit ...

Of course incurring such debt in pursuit of an MFE is more akin to indentured courtiership, but then the ranks of aspirants are swelling even as those of the aristocracy have ebbed ...