ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to denaturalise a key feature upon which the student loan industry has been constructed: the continued expansion of a loan-based system of higher education. The Guaranteed Student Loan Program was established in the Higher Education Act and was later renamed the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). The chapter demonstrates the state, through its unfolding forms of debtfarism, has facilitated the rapid rise of for-profit, private universities by encouraging the expansion and reproduction of the student loan industry. It provides an overview of the student loan industry and discusses the meaning of students as surplus population therein. The chapter focuses on historical materialist analysis of the role of the debtfare state in the expansion and reproduction of the student loan industry from the 1970s to 2010. It concludes remarks by highlighting the key findings of a government report that identifies private student loans as the main problem of student loan debt in the United States.
