Episode 8. Indebted: How Families Make College Work at any Cost

Sociology Professor Beverly Yuen Thompson overviews the book, Indebted: How Families Make College Work at any Cost, by Caitlin Zaloom in 2019. This is an ethnographic study based on interviews with 160 participants, including college students and their parents, about how they understand, communicate about, and engage with student loan debt to finance college, even while the employment arena is increasingly uncertain and precarious. The participants attend both NYU, where Zaloom is herself a professor, as well as students attending a public university in Michigan of the United States. This video overviews the main points of each chapter, the facts and figures, and the sociological framework of understanding the exponentially growing institutions engaged with the process of financing student debt.Video link Get full access to Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson at snakegrrlsociology.substack.com/subscribe