Student loan debt and the pursuit of the American Dream to be topic

Dartmouth College scholar Jason Houle will discuss “A Generation Indebted: Student Loan Debt and the Pursuit of the American Dream” at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 2, in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public

“Student loan debt has risen rapidly over the past several decades, and today the average young adult can expect to leave college with nearly $25,000 in debt,” Houle explained. He added, “In the aggregate, outstanding student loan debt totals $1.3 trillion and has doubled since 2007, surpassing credit card debt; it now trails only behind home mortgage debt on the household balance sheet. In this talk, I summarize the sociological literature on student loan debt among the current generation and explore the causes of the rise in student loan debt, the immediate and long-term consequences of debt, and what can be done about it.”

Houle is a sociologist interested in social disparities in mental health and well-being, processes of social stratification and mobility, and life course sociology. His work has been featured in New York magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Pacific Standard CNBC/NBC News, InsideHigherEd.com, and Al Jazeera. He received his Ph.D. in sociology and demography from the Pennsylvania State University in 2011. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2011 to 2013. He joined the faculty at Dartmouth College as an assistant professor of sociology in July 2013.

Houle’s visit was organized by Andrew Lindner, assistant professor of sociology at Skidmore.