Noam Chomsky Quotes

The rising costs of higher education coupled with the stress of paying student loans are putting increasing pressure on students.

There's a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans.

The only thing wrong with student loans is that you have to pay them back.

This is a very connected, tolerant, creative generation, but a lot of them feel really constrained because they've got this big debt.

I listened to the students on campus in Plymouth, worried about their steadily deepening debts and how on earth they would ever escape them.

Borrowing to pay for college used to be the exception; now it's the rule.

Many students graduate from college and professional schools, including those of social work, nursing, medicine, teaching and law, with crushing debt burdens.

Debt is a trap, especially student debt, which is enormous, far larger than credit card debt. It's a trap for the rest of your life because the laws are designed so that you can't get out of it. If a business, say, gets in too much debt, it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy.

College gives people learning and also takes away future opportunities by loading the next generation down with debt.

The cost of college education today is so high that many young people are giving up their dream of going to college, while many others are graduating deeply in debt.

In the 2007-2008 academic year, the average student working on a bachelor’s degree from a for-profit college found herself in deeper debt ($32,700) than her counterpart attending a private [non-profit] college ($17,700).]

We need to stop the vicious cycle of debt that is strangling us.

Overwhelming, student loan payments are holding millions back from buying homes, starting families, and saving for retirement.

I promise not to take my thousands of dollars in student loan debt and move to Mexico. At least not right away.

When you have a debt that's strangling you, you're not growing.

Everyday people are graduating from universities with crippling debt, stifling their opportunity for financial mobility, that is what's broken with this country.

Once you get into debt, it’s hell to get out. Don’t let credit card debt carry over. You can’t get ahead paying eighteen percent.

Debt never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation...it is never laid off work...it buys no food; it wears no clothes; it is unhoused... it has neither weddings nor births nor deaths; it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff. Once in debt, it is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it...and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.

Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a disciplinary technique, and by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the disciplinarian culture. This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy.

If you’re not familiar with it, a college degree is a thing that we tell our kids to buy with money they don’t have, in hopes that it will help them make money they might earn, which will give them the ability to pay back the money they spent in order to make the money they’re paying it back with.

Student loans have been helpful to many. But they offer neither incentive nor assistance to those students who, by reason of family or other obligations, are unable or unwilling to go deeper into debt. ... It is, moreover, only prudent economic and social policy for the public to share part of the costs of the long period of higher education for those whose development is essential to our national economic and social well-being. All of us share in the benefits - all should share in the costs.

Debt rolls a man over and over, binding him hand and foot, and letting him hang upon the fatal mesh until the long-legged interest devours him.

Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.

Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.

There are 43 million people who are locked into predatory student loan debt, from which there is no exit.