A new survey of federal student loan borrowers by the Institute for College Access and Success, a nonprofit focused on college affordability, found that about a fifth of borrowers are currently in either delinquency or default.
“These findings bring even greater urgency to ongoing concerns about a looming ‘default cliff,’ where an unprecedented number of borrowers struggle so much to repay their loans that they default on their payments in droves,” Michele Zampini, TICAS’s associate vice president for federal policy and advocacy, wrote in a blog post.
The Department of Education itself acknowledged a potential default cliff in an August data release, Zampini noted, writing that, although no new borrowers had defaulted since payments were paused in March 2020, many delinquent borrowers were in danger of defaulting after that pause ended.
Zampini also wrote that student loan default “comes with severe and punitive consequences.”
Just over half of respondents (52 percent) said their debt has negatively affected their ability to save for retirement, and 45 percent said the same about their ability to find and afford housing. Slightly fewer participants said that their student loan debt was “worth it”—41 percent—than said it wasn’t, at 48 percent. Advanced degree holders were more likely to consider their debt “worth it” than those with an associate or bachelor’s degree, as were male borrowers compared to female borrowers.
For Generation Z, the old story of social mobility—study hard, go to college, work your way up—has lost its certainty. The class divide that once seemed bridgeable through education now feels entrenched, as debt, precarious work, and economic volatility blur the promise of progress.
The new economy—dominated by artificial intelligence, speculative assets like cryptocurrency, and inflated housing markets—has not delivered stability for most. Instead, it’s widened gaps between those who own and those who owe. Many young Americans feel locked out of wealth-building entirely. Some have turned to riskier bets—digital assets, gig work, or start-ups powered by AI tools—to chase opportunities that traditional institutions no longer provide. Others have succumbed to despair. Suicide rates among young adults have climbed sharply in recent years, correlating with financial stress, debt, and social isolation.
And echoing through this uncertain landscape is a song that first rose from the coalfields of Kentucky during the Great Depression—Florence Reece’s 1931 protest hymn, “Which Side Are You On?”
Come all you good workers,
Good news to you I’ll tell,
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Nearly a century later, those verses feel newly urgent—because Gen Z is again being forced to pick a side: between solidarity and survival, between reforming a broken system or resigning themselves to it.
The Class Divide and the Broken Ladder
Despite record levels of education, Gen Z faces limited social mobility. College remains a class marker, not an equalizer. Students from affluent families attend better-funded universities, graduate on time, and often receive help with housing or job placement. Working-class and first-generation students, meanwhile, navigate under-resourced campuses, heavier debt, and weaker professional networks.
The Pew Research Center found that first-generation college graduates have nearly $100,000 less in median wealth than peers whose parents also hold degrees. For many, the degree no longer guarantees a secure foothold in the middle class—it simply delays financial independence.
They say in Harlan County,
There are no neutrals there,
You’ll either be a union man,
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.
The metaphor still fits: there are no neutrals in the modern class struggle over debt, housing, and automation.
Debt, Doubt, and the New Normal
Gen Z borrowers owe an average of around $23,000 in student loans, a figure growing faster than any other generation’s debt load. Over half regret taking on those loans. Many delay buying homes, having children, or even seeking medical care. Those who drop out without degrees are burdened with debt and little to show for it.
The debt-based model has become a defining feature of American life—especially for the working class. The price of entry to a better future is borrowing against one’s own.
Don’t scab for the bosses,
Don’t listen to their lies,
Us poor folks haven’t got a chance
Unless we organize.
If Reece’s song once called miners to unionize against coal barons, its spirit now calls borrowers, renters, adjuncts, and gig workers to collective resistance against financial systems that profit from their precarity.
AI and the Erosion of Work
Artificial intelligence promises efficiency, but it also threatens to hollow out the entry-level job market Gen Z depends on. Automation in journalism, design, law, and customer service cuts off rungs of the career ladder just as young workers reach for them.
While elite graduates may move into roles that supervise or profit from AI, working-class Gen Zers are more likely to face displacement. AI amplifies the class divide: it rewards those who already have capital, coding skills, or connections—and sidelines those who don’t.
Crypto Dreams and Financial Desperation
Locked out of traditional wealth paths, many young people turned to cryptocurrency during the pandemic. Platforms like Robinhood and Coinbase promised quick gains and independence from the “rigged” economy. But when crypto markets crashed in 2022, billions in speculative wealth evaporated. Some who had borrowed or used student loan refunds to invest lost everything.
Online forums chronicled not only the financial losses but also the psychological fallout—stories of panic, shame, and in some tragic cases, suicide. The new “digital gold rush” became another mechanism for transferring wealth upward.
The Real Estate Wall
While digital markets rise and fall, real estate remains the ultimate symbol of exclusion. Home prices have climbed over 40 percent since 2020, while mortgage rates hover near 8 percent. For most of Gen Z, ownership is out of reach.
Older generations built equity through housing; Gen Z rents indefinitely, enriching landlords and institutional investors. Without intergenerational help, the “starter home” has become a myth. In America’s new class order, those who inherit property inherit mobility.
Despair and the Silent Crisis
Behind the data lies a mental health emergency. The CDC reports that suicide among Americans aged 10–24 has risen nearly 60 percent in the past decade. Economic precarity, debt, housing insecurity, and climate anxiety all contribute.
Therapists describe “financial trauma” as a defining condition for Gen Z—chronic anxiety rooted in systemic instability. Universities respond with mindfulness workshops, but few confront the deeper issue: a society that privatized risk and monetized hope.
They say in Harlan County,
There are no neutrals there—
Which side are you on, my people,
Which side are you on?
The question lingers like a challenge to policymakers, educators, and investors alike.
A Two-Tier Future
Today’s economy is splitting into two distinct realities:
The secure class, buffered by family wealth, education, AI-driven income, and real estate assets.
The precarious class, burdened by loans, high rents, unstable work, and psychological strain.
The supposed democratization of opportunity through technology and education has in practice entrenched a new feudalism—one coded in algorithms and contracts instead of coal and steel.
Repairing the System, Not the Student
For Generation Z, the American Dream has become a high-interest loan. Education, technology, and financial innovation—once tools of liberation—now function as instruments of control.
Reforming higher education is necessary, but not sufficient. The deeper work lies in redistributing power: capping predatory interest rates, investing in affordable housing, curbing speculative bubbles, ensuring that AI’s gains benefit labor as well as capital, and confronting the mental health crisis that shadows all of it.
Florence Reece’s song endures because its question has never been answered—only updated. As Gen Z stands at the intersection of debt and digital capitalism, that question rings louder than ever:
Which side are you on?
Sources
Florence Reece, “Which Side Are You On?” (1931).
Pew Research Center, “First-Generation College Graduates Lag Behind Their Peers on Key Economic Outcomes,” 2021.
Dēmos, The Debt Divide: How Student Debt Impacts Opportunities for Black and White Borrowers, 2016.
EducationData.org, “Student Loan Debt by Generation,” 2024.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Gen Z Student Debt and Wealth Data Brief, 2022.
CNBC, “Gen Z vs. Their Parents: How the Generations Stack Up Financially,” 2024.
WUSF, “Generation Z’s Net Worth Is Being Undercut by College Debt,” 2024.
Newsweek, “Student Loan Update: Gen Z Hit with Highest Payments,” 2024.
The Kaplan Group, “How Student Debt Is Locking Millennials and Gen Z Out of Homeownership,” 2024.
CDC, Suicide Mortality in the United States, 2001–2022, National Center for Health Statistics, 2023.
Brookings Institution, “The Impact of AI on Labor Markets: Inequality and Automation,” 2024.
CNBC, “Crypto Crash Wipes Out Billions in Investor Wealth, Gen Z Most Exposed,” 2023.
Zillow, “U.S. Housing Affordability Reaches Lowest Point Since 1989,” 2024.
Negotiated rulemaking, in which the federal government convenes representatives of affected parties before implementing major policy changes, is one of the wonkier topics in higher education. (I cannot recommend enough Rebecca Natow’s book on the topic.) Negotiated rulemaking has been in the news quite a bit lately as the Department of Education works to implement changes to federal student loan borrowing limits passed in this summer’s budget reconciliation law.
Since 2006, students attending graduate and professional programs have been able to borrow up to the cost of attendance. But the reconciliation law limited graduate programs to $100,000 and professional programs to $200,000, setting off negotiations on which programs counted as “professional” (and thus received higher loan limits). The Department of Education started with ten programs and the list eventually went to eleven with the addition of clinical psychology.
In this short post, I take a look at the debt and earnings of these programs that meet ED’s definition of “professional,” along with a few other programs that could be considered professional but were not.
Data and Methods
I used program-level College Scorecard data, focusing on debt data from 2019 and five-year earnings data from 2020. (These are the most recent data points available, as the Scorecard has not been meaningfully updated during the second Trump administration. Five-year earnings get students in health fields beyond medical residencies. I pulled all doctoral/first professional fields from the data by four-digit Classification of Instructional Programs codes, as well as master’s degrees in theology to meet the listed criteria.
Nine of the eleven programs had enough graduates with debt and earnings to report data; osteopathic medicine and podiatry did not. There were five other fields of study with at least 14 programs reporting data: education, educational administration, rehabilitation, nursing, and business administration. All of these clearly prepare people for employment in a profession, but are not currently recognized as “professional.”
Key takeaways
Below is a summary table of debt and earnings for professional programs, including the number of programs above the $100,000 (graduate) and $200,000 (professional) thresholds. Dentistry, pharmacy, and medicine have a sizable share of programs above the $100,000 threshold, while law (the largest field) has only four of 195 programs over $200,000. Theology is the only one of the nine “professional” programs with sufficient data that has higher five-year earnings than debt, suggesting that students in other programs may have a hard time accessing the private market to fill the gap between $200,000 and the full cost of attendance.
On the other hand, four of the five programs not included as “professional” have higher earnings than debt, with nursing and educational administration being the only programs with sufficient data that had debt levels below 60% of earnings. More than one-third of rehabilitation programs had debt over the new $100,000 cap, while few programs in other fields had that high of a debt level. (Education looks pretty good now, doesn’t it?)
I expect the debate over what counts as “professional” to end up in courts and to possibly make its way into a future budget reconciliation bill (about the only way Congress passes legislation at this point). Until then, I will be hoping for newer and more granular data about affected programs.
One month ago, Republicans chose to shut down the government rather than protect our healthcare. Now, by refusing to process SNAP benefits for November, they’ve put 42 million working families at risk of going hungry or being forced deeper into debt just to put food on the table.
Most of us aren’t in debt because we live beyond our means — we’re in debt because we’ve been denied the means to live. This is especially true for SNAP recipients, most of whom are workers being paid starvation wages by greedy employers, or tenants being squeezed every month by predatory landlords. SNAP is a lifeline for people trapped in an economic system that’s designed to work against us, which is exactly why they’re trying to destroy it.
Authoritarianism thrives on silence and complicity. We refuse to give in.This weekend, organizers across the country are mobilizing a mass effort to connect people with existing mutual aid networks. If you are on SNAP and are not sure where to look for help, get plugged into your local mutual aid network to get your needs met and organize to help others meet theirs.
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Dive Brief:
The U.S. Department of Education on Thursdayreleased final regulations that will bar organizations the agency deems as having a “substantial illegal purpose”from being a qualifying employer for the Public Service Loan Forgivenessprogram.
The Trump administration’s new rule will exclude organizations from the PSLF program that it determines to be“supporting terrorism and aiding and abetting illegal immigration,” among other activities, according to Thursday’s announcement.
Several advocacy groups immediately vowed to challenge the rule in court. They and other opponents argue the agency is politicizing the PSLF program and will use the new rule to remove organizations with goals not aligned with the Trump administration, such as providing gender-affirming care or supporting undocumented immigrants.
Dive Insight:
Congress created the PSLF program in 2007 to allow college graduates who work for government employers, including school districts, and certain nonprofits to receive debt relief on their student loans after making a decade of qualifying payments.
Many borrowers initially struggled to get relief through the program due to confusing eligibility requirements and loan servicer issues. As of April 2018, for example, just 55 workers had received debt relief through PSLF, according to a report that year from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
To address the problems, the Biden administration eased some of the program’s requirements in October 2022 for one year.The administration also released regulations that expanded which loan payments counted toward PSLF beginning in 2023.
By October 2024, over 1 million workers had received relief through the program during the Biden administration, the White House said at the time.
But in a March executive order directing the Education Department to change PSLF’s eligibility requirements, President Donald Trump accused the prior administration of abusing the program by relaxing its requirements. Trump also contended that the program sent tax dollars to “activist organizations”that harm national security and undermine American values.
The Education Department’s final rule, which takes effect July 2026, is meant to carry out the executive order.It will bar organizations from the PSLF program if the Education Department determines they illegally:
Aided and abetted violations of federal immigration law.
Aided and abetted illegal discrimination.
Supported terrorism or engaged in violence “for the purpose of obstructing or influencing Federal Government policy.”
Engaged in “chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children” — a common conservative description of providing gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
Engage in the “trafficking of children” across state lines to emancipate them from their parents.
Have a pattern of violating state laws.
The U.S. education secretary will determine whether employers have a “substantial illegal purpose” based on “a preponderance of the evidence,” which can include final federal or state court rulings or settlements in which organizations admit they engaged in illegal activities, according to an agency fact sheet.
Employers who are notified of such a finding will have an opportunity to respond and appeal.
They will also be able to “enter into a corrective action plan” with the Education Department to avoid being blocked from the program, according to an agency fact sheet. However, if they lose access to PSLF, they will only be able to reapply after 10 years.
If an organization is blocked from the program, loan payments made by its employees will still count toward their PSLF’s 10-year clock until the Education Department’s finding takes effect, according to a fact sheet.
“However, any payment made after an employer is deemed no longer eligible for PSLF will not be counted toward the number of payments to forgiveness,” the department said in the 185-page final rule, set to be published on Friday.“This approach ensures that workers who have served in good faith are not punished, while also protecting taxpayers by preventing benefits from flowing to unlawful conduct in the future.”
Student advocacy and nonprofit groups have decried the new rule.
Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, vowed in a Thursday statement to sue in the next few days.
“Instead of supporting first responders, healthcare workers, and teachers working to make our country a better place, the Trump Administration is punishing public servants for their employers’ perceived political views,” Ament said.
Democracy Forward and Protect Borrowers, two other advocacy groups, likewise said they would challenge the rule in court. In a joint statement Thursday, they said the rule would allow the Education Department to target organizations that support immigrants, provide gender-affirming care and protect the free speech rights of protesters.
“This new rule is a craven attempt to usurp the legislature’s authority in an unconstitutional power grab aimed at punishing people with political views different than the Administration’s,” they said.
Todd S. Nelson rose from academic beginnings—a B.S. from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the University of Nevada, Reno—to dominate the for-profit higher education space. Over nearly four decades, Nelson has amassed vast personal wealth leading University of Phoenix, Education Management Corporation (EDMC), and Perdoceo Education, even as each institution left embattled students and regulatory fallout in its wake.
Under Nelson’s leadership, Apollo Group (parent of University of Phoenix) mountains of revenue—$2.2 billion and over 300,000 students by 2006—coincided with a $41 million payday in that year alone. He resigned amid pressure over deceptive admissions practices.
Nelson’s move to EDMC in 2007 triggered another enrollment explosion—from 82,000 to over 160,000 students by 2011—propelled by federal student aid. Annual revenues reached nearly $2.8 billion, even as employees were alleged to be encouraged to enroll “anyone and everyone” to meet quotas. This aggressive focus on recruitment came with enormous personal compensation—approximately $13.1 million annually—while students endured mounting debt and dwindling outcomes.
A 2015 landmark settlement exposed EDMC’s alleged violations under the False Claims Act. The Justice Department accused the company of operating as a “recruitment mill,” illegally funneling federal funds through false certifications. EDMC agreed to pay $95.5 million in damages and forgive more than $102 million in student loans, affecting about 80,000 former students—averaging around $1,370 per student.Internal documents and court filings paint a grim picture: incentive-based pay for recruiters, breach of fiduciary duties, and a business model the trustee called “fundamentally fraudulent.”
Nelson’s chapter at Career Education Corporation (later Perdoceo) echoed the same script. Campuses shuttered, including Le Cordon Bleu and Sanford-Brown, left students stranded with untransferable credits—and yet Nelson’s compensation remained soaring. In 2019, he earned $7.4 million and held about $12 million in equity.
Whistleblower accounts from inside Perdoceo’s operations are damning. One former recruiter described pressure to enroll students “by any means necessary,” including coercive calls and emotional manipulation—often targeting vulnerable applicants with low income or lacking basic readiness. Despite those practices, Perdoceo reaped profits, with Nelson publicly touting revenue growth even as the Department of Education issued a formal notice in May 2021: thousands of borrower defense claims were pending against the company, alleging misrepresentations on credits, employment prospects, and accreditation.
Further regulatory investigations deepened through early 2022, focusing on recruiting, marketing, and financial aid practices—yet no executive accountability has followed.
The narrative that emerges is stark: Todd S. Nelson repeatedly led institutions to profit-fueled expansion using students’ federal dollars, while suppressing outcomes and exposing students to debilitating debt. Lawsuits, settlements, and investigative reports expose deceptive enrollment practices, false claims, and regulatory violations—but the executives—including Nelson—walk away with wealth and are rarely held personally responsible.
Sources
Wikipedia: Todd S. Nelson—compensation figures and resignation amid scrutiny.
TribLIVE: Allegations of “anyone and everyone” being enrolled to meet quotas under Nelson’s reign at EDMC.
Career Education Review: Insights on quality decline amid enrollment growth at EDMC and Perdoceo.
Department of Justice and NASFAA: 2015 EDMC settlement—$95.5 million damages, $102 million in loan forgiveness for hundreds of thousands.
Bankruptcy court filings: Allegations of fraudulent business model and incentive-driven recruitment.
Republic Report & USA Today: Whistleblower testimony on Perdoceo’s predatory recruiting tactics.
They call it a “path to opportunity,” but for millions of students and their families, American higher education is just Flirtin’ with Disaster—a gamble with long odds and staggering costs. Borrowers bet their future on a credential, universities gamble with public trust and private equity, and the system as a whole plays chicken with economic and social collapse. Cue the screeching guitar of Molly Hatchet’s 1979 Southern rock anthem, and you’ve got a fitting soundtrack to the dangerous dance between institutions of higher ed and the consumers they so aggressively court.
The Student as Collateral
For the last three decades, higher education in the United States has increasingly behaved like a high-stakes poker table, only it’s the students who are holding a weak hand. Underfunded public colleges, predatory for-profits, and tuition-hiking private universities all promise upward mobility but deliver it only selectively. The rest? They leave the table with debt, no degree, or both.
Colleges market dreams, but they sell debt. Americans now owe more than $1.7 trillion in student loans. And while some elite schools can claim robust return-on-investment, most institutions below the top tiers produce increasingly shaky value propositions—especially for working-class, first-gen, and BIPOC students. For them, education is often less an elevator to the middle class than a trapdoor into a lifetime of wage garnishment and diminished credit.
Institutional Recklessness
Universities themselves are no saints in this drama. Fueled by financial aid dollars, college leaders have expanded campuses like land barons—building luxury dorms, bloated athletic programs, and administrative empires. Meanwhile, instruction is increasingly outsourced to underpaid adjuncts, and actual student support systems are skeletal at best.
The recklessness isn’t limited to for-profits like Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, and the Art Institutes, all of which collapsed under federal scrutiny. Even brand-name nonprofits—think USC, NYU, Columbia—have been exposed for enrolling students into costly, often ineffective online master’s programs in partnership with edtech firms. The real product wasn’t the degree—it was the debt.
A Nation at the Brink
From community colleges to research universities, institutions are now being pushed to their financial and ethical limits. The number of colleges closing or merging has skyrocketed, especially among small private colleges and rural campuses. Layoffs, like those at Southern New Hampshire University and across public systems in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and West Virginia, show that austerity is the new norm.
But the real disaster is systemic. The American college promise—that hard work and higher ed will lead to security—is unraveling in real time. With declining enrollments, aging infrastructure, and increasing political pressure to defund or control curriculum, many schools are shifting from public goods to privatized risk centers. Even state flagship universities now behave more like hedge funds than educational institutions.
Consumers or Victims?
One of the cruelest ironies is that students are still told they are “consumers” who should “shop wisely.” But education is not like buying a toaster. There’s no refund if your college closes. There’s no protection if your degree is devalued. And there’s no bankruptcy for most student loan debt. Even federal forgiveness efforts—like Borrower Defense or Public Service Loan Forgiveness—are riddled with bureaucratic landmines and political sabotage.
In this asymmetric market, the house almost always wins. Institutions keep the revenue. Third-party contractors keep their profits. Politicians collect campaign checks. And the borrowers? They’re left flirtin’ with disaster, hoping the system doesn’t collapse before they’ve paid off the last dime.
No Exit Without Accountability
There’s still time to change course—but it will require radical rethinking. That means:
Holding institutions and executives accountable for false advertising and financial harm.
Reining in tuition hikes and decoupling higher ed from Wall Street’s expectations.
Fully funding community colleges and public universities to serve as real social infrastructure.
Expanding debt cancellation—not just piecemeal forgiveness—for those most harmed by a failed system.
Ending the exploitation of adjunct labor and restoring the academic mission.
Otherwise, higher education in the U.S. will continue on its reckless path, a broken-down system blasting its anthem of denial as it speeds toward the edge.
As the song goes:
“I’m travelin’ down the road and I’m flirtin’ with disaster… I got the pedal to the floor, my life is runnin’ faster.”
So is the American student debt machine—and we’re all strapped in for the ride.
Sources:
U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Portfolio
“The Trillion Dollar Lie,” Student Borrower Protection Center
The Century Foundation, “The High Cost of For-Profit Colleges”
Inside Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Education, Higher Ed Dive
National Center for Education Statistics
Molly Hatchet, Flirtin’ with Disaster, Epic Records, 1979
Student loan debt in the United States has ballooned into a $1.7 trillion crisis, affecting over 43 million borrowers.Beyond the staggering figures, this debt exacts a profound human cost, influencing personal relationships, family dynamics, and long-term financial stability.
Student debt doesn’t just affect individual borrowers; it reverberates across generations.Parents and grandparents often co-sign loans or take on debt themselves to support their children’s education.The TIAA and MIT AgeLab study revealed that 43% of parents and grandparents who took out loans for their children or grandchildren plan to increase retirement savings once the student loan is paid off. This shift in financial priorities underscores the long-term impact of educational debt on family financial planning.
The student loan crisis is more than a financial issue; it’s a pervasive force affecting the fabric of American life.From delayed life milestones and strained family relationships to mental health challenges and economic repercussions, the impact is profound and far-reaching.Addressing this crisis requires comprehensive policy reforms that consider the human stories behind the debt figures.Only then can we hope to alleviate the burden and restore financial freedom to millions of Americans.
Share Your Story
The student loan crisis is more than a financial issue; it’s a pervasive force affecting the fabric of American life.From delayed life milestones and strained family relationships to mental health challenges and economic repercussions, the impact is profound and far-reaching.
We want to hear from you.If you or someone you know is grappling with the weight of student debt, please consider sharing your story.Your experiences can shed light on the real-world implications of this crisis and help others understand they’re not alone.
To share your story, please email us at [email protected]with the subject line “Student Debt Story.”Include your name, location, and a brief summary of your experience.We may feature your story in an upcoming article to highlight the human toll of student debt.
Together, we can bring attention to this pressing issue and advocate for meaningful change.
Kashana Cauley’s second novel, The Payback (out July 15, 2025), might read like a brilliantly absurd heist movie—but its critique of debt peonage, surveillance capitalism, and broken educational promises is dead serious. With its hilarious yet harrowing depiction of three underemployed retail workers taking on the student loan-industrial complex, The Payback arrives not just as a much-anticipated literary event, but as a cultural reckoning.
The protagonist, Jada Williams, is relentlessly hounded by the “Debt Police”—a dystopian twist that, while fictional, feels terrifyingly close to home for America’s 44 million student debtors. But instead of accepting a life of financial bondage, Jada and her mall coworkers hatch a plan to erase their student debt and strike back against the system that sold them a future in exchange for permanent servitude.
This wild caper—praised by Publishers Weekly, Bustle, The Boston Globe, and others for its intelligence and audacity—may be fiction, but it echoes the real-life story of one bold man who did exactly what Jada dreams of doing.
The Legend of Papas Fritas
In the mid-2000s, a Chilean man known only by his pseudonym, Papas Fritas (French Fries), pulled off one of the most radical and symbolic acts of debt resistance in modern history. A former art student at Chile’s prestigious Universidad del Mar—a private for-profit institution later shut down for corruption and fraud—Papas Fritas discovered that the university had falsified financial documents to secure millions in profits while leaving students in mountains of debt.
His response? He infiltrated the school’s administrative offices, extracted records documenting approximately $500 million in student loans, and burned them. Literally. With no backup copies.
He then turned the ashes into an art installation called “La Morada del Diablo” (The Devil’s Dwelling), displayed it publicly, and became an instant folk hero. For many Chileans, who had taken to the streets in the early 2010s protesting an exploitative and privatized higher education system, Papas Fritas was more than a trickster—he was a vigilante philosopher, an artist of revolt.
His act raised questions that still haunt us: What is the moral value of debt acquired through deception? Should the victims of predatory institutions be forced to pay for their own exploitation?
Fiction Meets Resistance
In The Payback, Cauley’s characters don’t just want debt relief—they want retribution. And like Papas Fritas, they understand that justice in an unjust system may require transgression, even sabotage. Cauley, a former Daily Show writer and incisive New York Times columnist, doesn’t shy away from this. Her prose is electric with rage, joy, absurdity, and clarity.
She also knows exactly what she’s doing. Jada’s plan to eliminate debt isn’t merely about numbers—it’s about dignity, possibility, and reclaiming a future that was sold for interest. Cauley’s fiction, like Papas Fritas’s fire, is not just a spectacle—it’s a warning, and a dare.
In an America where student debt totals over $1.7 trillion, where debt servicers act like bounty hunters, and where the promise of higher education has become a trapdoor, The Payback delivers catharsis—and inspiration.
Hollywood, take note: this story demands a screen adaptation. But more importantly, policymakers, debt collectors, and university administrators should take heed. The people are reading. And they’re getting ideas.
Preorder The Payback
Signed editions are available through Black-owned LA bookstores Reparations Club, Malik Books, and Octavia’s Bookshelf. National preorder links are now live. Read it before the Debt Police knock on your door.
Because as both Cauley and Papas Fritas remind us: sometimes, the only moral debt is the one you refuse to pay.
