Indebted - by Caitlin Zaloom

About the Book

Taking readers into the homes of middle-class families to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed family life, the author describes the profound moral conflicts for parents take on enormous debts and gamble on an investment that might not pay off.

Book Synopsis

How the financial pressures of paying for college affect the lives and well-being of middle-class families

The struggle to pay for college is a defining feature of middle-class life in America. Caitlin Zaloom takes readers into homes of families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed our most sacred relationships. She describes the profound moral conflicts for parents as they try to honor what they see as their highest parental duty--providing their children with opportunity--and shows how parents and students alike are forced to gamble on an investment that might not pay off. Superbly written and unflinchingly honest, Indebted breaks through the culture of silence surrounding the student debt crisis, exposing the unspoken costs of sending our kids to college.

Review Quotes

Indebted ends up being a story about modern families--about how we understand our responsibilities toward one another in a time of diminishing prospects. There's a distinctly modern paradox in Zaloom's version of middle-class life, with parents preparing their children for adulthood while also protecting them from it. [Indebted] takes much of what we have come to accept and renders it alien and a bit absurd . . . . At times, Indebted reads like an ethnography of a dwindling way of life, an elegy for families who still abide by the fantasy that thrift and hard work will be enough to secure the American Dream.---Hua Hsu, The New Yorker-- "Publishers Weekly"

A compelling new book.---Gillian Tett, Financial Times-- "Publishers Weekly"

A great new book . . . . It has come to be the case that . . . . literally the definition of being middle class is sending your kid to college when you can't afford to . . . . Think about the psychic toll that this fundamental paradox is taking on the nation, the effects it has, both on folks who don't go to college, who are missing the cut-off of the middle class, folks who are in the middle class, and then, as the college scandal shows, all the way to the very top. It's insanity cascading up and down the system. That's the status quo we have. And that's exactly what Caitlin Zaloom explains so well.---Chris Hayes, Why Is This Happening podcast-- "Publishers Weekly"

A Forbes' Pick for The Year's Best Books About Higher Education, 2019-- "Publishers Weekly"

An excellent introduction to the student finance complex for students, parents, and present and future policy makers.-- "Choice"

Important new book . . . . Zaloom demonstrates that the moral logic of financing college is unique to the United States.---Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, The Baffler

Paying for college is a total nightmare for anyone who is not a total bazillionaire, but it's really hard to talk about that, because it's a sensitive subject . . . . All these families really get into the nitty gritty of what they went through. Zaloom got them to really open up . . . . It's a very eye-opening book. It's super interesting. So my recommendation . . . check out Indebted by Caitlin Zaloom.---Dan Kois, Slate

The story of the rising cost of college in America is often told through numbers, with references to runaway tuition sticker prices and the ever-growing pile of outstanding student debt. The personal toll these trends have taken is hard to convey, but the anthropologist Caitlin Zaloom does so in her new book Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost, which documents how the price of a college education has forced many middle-class families to rearrange their priorities, finances, and lives.---Joe Pinsker, The Atlantic

Zaloom has produced a book that is accessible to those without a prior understanding of economics . . . . [Indebted] is a timely book and may be of interest to all parents and students preparing for entry to HE.---Chloe Reid, LSE-- "Choice"

Zaloom provides a clear-sighted and timely analysis.-- "Library Journal"

Zaloom's book has become a sensation because so many people instinctively know that something is deeply out of whack in the way we pay for university education.---Sasha Abramsky, The Nation

Zaloom's comprehensive exposé of the college-financing industry argues that middle-class Americans are in an unresolvable bind: culturally mandated to ensure 'open futures' for their children, but unable to afford to do so without help, they become ensnared in risky, speculative debt. . . . The facts described here will be familiar to anyone who's heard of the student-debt crisis; the analysis, with its emphasis on the moral dilemma facing middle-class families, will resonate with parents confronting it.-- "Publishers Weekly"

About the Author

Caitlin Zaloom is professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University. She is a founding editor of Public Books and the author of Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London.