271 - Tiffany Konyen - Student Loan Debt is a Social Justice Issue!

Oct 30

“Whether you're a debtor or a non-debtor or a previous debtor, that impacts the way we see and receive each other.” - Tiffany Konyen

If you’re one of the 43 million Americans currently living under the crushing weight of student loan debt, that’s by design, not personal failure. Under our late-stage capitalist system, the cost of a college degree has far outpaced the wages offered to pay for it. But beyond the devaluation of an educated workforce lies a darker truth. Capitalism, racism, classism, and sexism (pick an -ism!) thrive amid populations that are exhausted, undereducated, or indebted. No wonder we can’t catch our breaths or pad our bank accounts.

Tiffany Konyen wants to change how America thinks about financing education for its citizens. They are a Doctoral Candidate in the Anthropology and Social Change department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Their research offers insight into the impacts of student loan debt on material life conditions and processes of transformation within graduate education in the US. Tiffany is also a member and organizer with The Debt Collective, the country's first debtors union, with the purpose of collectively destigmatizing and leveraging experiences of indebtedness towards systemic change.

Carrying tuition debt often triggers feelings of alienation, isolation, shame, and guilt. “The feelings also come up for those who aren't in debt or who’ve paid it back,” says Tiffany, who calls student debt out for the social injustice that it is. “There's this…pernicious narrative that's not just around debt and economic inequity, but also around white supremacy, the ‘why should anyone else get anything if I'm not getting it?’

It’s this scarcity mentality that's been so dredged through our ways of thinking that say there's not enough.”

Education isn’t a rarified commodity. It’s an infinitely renewable community resource. Think about all the therapists, teachers, doctors, or civil engineers who could commit their talents to underserved districts if they didn’t have to worry about paying off massive student loans. That’s the energy we should strive for!

Tiffany agrees. “To break that status quo, to break the hold of the way we should be rather than being who we are, these are the powerful parts of abolition and debt work,” she says. “It helps people to see themselves outside of the systems that they're so captured by and feel so defined by.”

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

California Institute of Integral Studies

The Debt Collective

Occupy Wall Street

GUEST CONTACT & BIO

Bay Area Debtors Union

Tiffany Konyen (she/they) is a Doctoral Candidate in the Anthropology and Social Change Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. Their research offers insight into the impacts of student loan debt on material life conditions, as well as on processes of transformation within graduate education in the US. They are a member and organizer with the Debt Collective, the country’s first Debtor’s Union with the expressed purpose of collectively de-stigmatizing and leveraging experiences of indebtedness towards systemic change.

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