Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis
Skyrocketing student-loan burdens are leading an entire generation to defer the traditional milestones of adulthood: buying homes, getting married, starting families, and saving for retirement. The burden weighs more heavily on women and Black Americans, and with almost 10 percent of student debtors now over the age of sixty, it is a crisis no longer limited to the young.
Ryann Liebenthal’s Burdened tells the maddening story of how the power plays of legislators and presidents, the commodification of higher ed, and the rapacious practices of for-profit colleges and private lenders have created today’s student-debt lava pit.
As the notion of student-loan cancellation percolates into the political mainstream, Liebenthal offers a deeply researched, sweeping narrative of our broken system. Rather than give in to despair, she boldly charts a way out, offering hopeful solutions to this seemingly unfixable problem.
MODERATOR
Dr. Carmen Rojas is the president and CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation. Under her leadership, the foundation launched the prestigious Freedom Scholar award, and since starting in 2020 granted more than $170M in funding to dozens of organizations doing the hard work of shifting power to those people who have long been excluded from having it. Prior to MCF, Dr. Rojas was the cofounder and CEO of the Workers Lab, an innovation lab that partners with workers to develop new ideas that help them succeed and flourish.
PANELIST
Ryann Liebenthal is a writer and editor living in Oakland, California. She has written on student debt for the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, and the New Republic. Her book, Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis, was published by Dey Street in 2024.
Leah Barlow, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Liberal Studies Department at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Her research interests are in Black art and Black spatial studies with a particular focus on the US South. Dr. Barlow holds a PhD in Africana studies, and a master’s and bachelor's degree in English with a focus in African American literature.
Dr. Jalil Mustaffa Bishop is an activist and researcher focused on expanding the public good through racial justice movements. He cofounded Equity Research Cooperative, a collective of advocates working to be the research arm of movement building through redistribution, data, and solidarity. He has published dozens of op-eds, journal articles, and book chapters on the Black student-debt crisis, grassroots policymaking, and anti-Blackness.
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