Going Under to Get Ahead: Paying for College in an Age of Uncertainty
type: CreativeWork
description: Student loans have become a cornerstone of democratized access to higher education. This dissertation contributes a novel approach to conceptualizing the student loan issue: students as consumers—both of college and of the student loans themselves. Through a mixed-method in-depth study of a graduating cohort at a public flagship university, I examine how students perceive these loans and the impact of these perceptions on the subjective experience of contemporary students. I gathered original data using a campus survey of registered seniors, in-depth follow-up interviews with a strategic sample of survey respondents, and a second, post-graduation follow-up interview with the main interview sample approximately two years later. In the first manuscript, I use 111 in-depth interviews to examine the evaluative frameworks students use to assess the legitimacy of student loan-use through the theoretical lens of “economic fictions,” which holds that in the face of unknown outcomes actors rely on socially coordinated narratives about the future to motivate decision-making. I use findings on ‘contested futures’ to argue that the political viability of an economic fiction may be based on a social consensus surrounding the acceptable distribution of risk. In the second manuscript, I present an original conceptual framework for understanding differences between students in how they approach and relate to the use of debt-based aid. I created this concept, which I refer to as orientations to debt, from an iterative analysis of the 178 longitudinal interviews. These orientations to debt cannot be reduced to total loan amount; rather, they are informed by lived experiences with economic (un)certainty and financial control and the information to which a student has access in the present. Among other implications, my findings suggest that variations in student orientations to debt are a likely source of the potential for debt-based aid to alter student trajectories while in college (…
abstract: Student loans have become a cornerstone of democratized access to higher education. This dissertation contributes a novel approach to conceptualizing the student loan issue: students as consumers—both of college and of the student loans themselves. Through a mixed-method in-depth study of a graduating cohort at a public flagship university, I examine how students perceive these loans and the impact of these perceptions on the subjective experience of contemporary students. I gathered original data using a campus survey of registered seniors, in-depth follow-up interviews with a strategic sample of survey respondents, and a second, post-graduation follow-up interview with the main interview sample approximately two years later. In the first manuscript, I use 111 in-depth interviews to examine the evaluative frameworks students use to assess the legitimacy of student loan-use through the theoretical lens of “economic fictions,” which holds that in the face of unknown outcomes actors rely on socially coordinated narratives about the future to motivate decision-making. I use findings on ‘contested futures’ to argue that the political viability of an economic fiction may be based on a social consensus surrounding the acceptable distribution of risk. In the second manuscript, I present an original conceptual framework for understanding differences between students in how they approach and relate to the use of debt-based aid. I created this concept, which I refer to as orientations to debt, from an iterative analysis of the 178 longitudinal interviews. These orientations to debt cannot be reduced to total loan amount; rather, they are informed by lived experiences with economic (un)certainty and financial control and the information to which a student has access in the present. Among other implications, my findings suggest that variations in student orientations to debt are a likely source of the potential for debt-based aid to alter student trajectories while in college (…
author: Clarke, Hannah E.
language: en
keywords: College consumption, College pathways, Financial aid, Higher education financing, Orientations to debt, Student loans
date published: 2019
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:56:34Z
provider: University of Arizona
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The University of Arizona.

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/633001