Making the case for public geographies of student debt abolition

Abstract

Many students attending institutions of higher education have mortgaged their futures by taking on debt in order to advance their education. Educators are implicated in this perilous system, with many academics struggling with debts themselves, and our livelihoods being sustained through exploitative debt relations, especially as tuition rates continue to increase while public funding for all levels of education is divested. Geographers are well-suited to study the student debt crisis, providing spatial and scalar (from the personal to the international) analysis to guide further examination, analysis, and activism. In this article, we articulate what we see as the uneven geographies of student debt. We provide three geographical frameworks for studying debt and outline how our shared experiences have shaped our understanding of student debt. Through three brief case studies, we illustrate the international topologies of student debt before making the case for a public geographies approach to student debt abolition. Finally, we end with a call to action.