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Hello, and welcome to Money Talks, a special extra podcast from Slate Money where we chat with brilliant and interesting people. I'm Emily Peck. I'm a correspondent at Axios and co-host of Slate Money. And I'm here today with the one and only Jillian Berman. She's an assisting managing editor at MarketWatch where she covers student loans. And I'm here with Jillian Berman, who is an assistant managing editor at MarketWatch.
And Jillian, you have a new book out, Sunk Cost, colon, Who's to Blame for the Nation's Broken Student Loan System and How to Fix It, just came out. Welcome, Jillian. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you because your book just does a really great job sort of unraveling student loans, which I will admit to not really understanding very well, even though I've written about them over the years.
And just how bizarre and bureaucratic and compromised and broken the whole thing is. So before we kind of dive into everything, I thought I would just challenge you and ask you to explain the subtitle of your book in like three sentences. Who is to blame for the broken student loan system? Sure. Yeah. So I would blame probably mostly policymakers for the way that they've designed the system and the lack of...
political will and imagination to kind of reimagine it. And then also sort of sub-blame the third party actors
which are lenders, nonprofit, middlemen, things like that, who have had the opportunity to bend the system to their will, sometimes in ways that are not in the best interest of borrowers and taxpayers. Yeah. So it's not the borrower's fault, even though everyone tries to blame them all the time. That is my take. It's not the borrower's fault. Okay. So, okay, I want to unpack all of that when we come back on Money Talks. Slate Money is brought to you by Charles Schwab.
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So I had this idea before we dive into all the history to just talk about sort of what's going on as we're taping. It is the middle of March and I've had like the corner of my eye kind of on student loans and like what's going on. What is going on? So student loan repayments were frozen for a really long time starting in COVID. And now my understanding is they just resumed in the fall.
But then something more recently happened where stuff is going to start showing up on people's credit scores again. Yeah. So during COVID, there was this pause on student loan payments, interest and collections. And then in the fall of 2023, actually, was technically when payments picked back up.
And so if you were a person who like could afford to make payments, that's when you should have started doing it because also the interest resumed. So that was kind of the time. But the Biden administration gave people basically like an extra year after that to defer kind of like the harshest consequences. So like the credit score drops, having your wages garnished or social security benefits taken for default. So they gave people like an extra year. They called it
I think they called it an on-ramp. So now we're getting to the point where loan servicers are reporting people falling behind on their payments. So like we're seeing big credit score drops probably pretty soon. We'll see people being reported as being in default, which really like kicks in the harshest consequences. So that is kind of like a back
drop, all of that is separate from anything that is going on with the Trump administration or anything like that was just happening anyway. So that's just level setting one place where we are now. So just at this moment where people are starting to face real consequences again for not paying their student loans, it's my understanding that the Trump administration is kind of, I mean, it's everyone's understanding. They're pulling back on services provided by the federal government like they've
you know, gutted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau where you could go and presumably like complain if you weren't getting help with your student loan. And I'm assuming they've done some other stuff too that's maybe making things more difficult for student loan borrowers. Yeah. I mean, it sort of hasn't quite happened yet, but they are looking for efficiencies. And so, right. And so as part of that, they are
I've done some reporting indicating that they are directing the office that oversees student loans to find ways to cut the funding that they give to the contractors that are basically the people who interact with student loan borrowers on a daily basis. So if you call and you say, I need help, these are the people who are supposed to help you. So when you cut funding to those kinds of things,
You're looking at longer call wait times. You're looking at in past moments of like big transition, you would have student loan servicers and the government doing sort of like mass outreach to try to get people back on track. That is not that's not the program. So, you know, those are like a couple of the things that the borrowers may already be feeling or will feel soon.
Because these people, they haven't, well, some of them, I guess, have started paying and they're fine. But then you imagine the ones who still aren't paying a year later, there are some real problems. Like maybe they can't be reached or they're in real distress or something. Yeah, probably like a combo of that. You know, either it's hard to find them or they were just putting it off because like they didn't have the money or, you know, the wherewithal to get on a payment plan that might help them. Two more things that I wanted to know about the Trump administration and student loans.
First, I saw earlier in March, the president signed some executive order limiting who can get public service student loan forgiveness. What is that about? Yeah. So public service loan forgiveness is this program. It's kind of a belagored program that's been around since 2007, signed by George W. Bush into law. And the idea behind the program is that if you work for the government or a 501c3 nonprofit and maybe a couple others, but
definitely 501c3 nonprofit for at least 10 years and make payments on your student loans for those 10 years, you have the debt canceled at the end of the 10 years. And so over, you know, over time, people have had trouble sort of accessing it. They've gotten bad information that has lengthened their path to relief or sort of made them have to start all over. There's just been lots of problems with the program, like since it's been around.
The Biden administration kind of did some stuff to try to fix it, make it a little bit easier to navigate. But most of the debates surrounding PSLF have been about that kind of stuff. Like, why is it so hard to navigate? Are servicers to blame? Is it really just that Congress created a complicated program? Yeah.
But what President Trump did was kind of introduce a whole new element, which was sort of to curtail or narrow the people that qualified. And it's a little bit unclear. It's kind of vague, but it's sort of indicating that it's people who work for organizations that are like
his political opponents. So, you know, sort of stuff like people who are working on behalf of illegal immigrants, people who are working on helping minors get gender affirming care, kind of things like that. So he's sort of indicated that he wants to use the program as a way to
discourage that activity. I don't know, punish people for participating in that activity. I'm not really sure how to put it. It's, you know, Congress created the program and Congress put the qualifications in place. So it's hard to know how much power necessarily he has to do that, but we'll see. It will definitely...
You know, as of now, it's just he signed this executive order. The Department of Education hasn't really taken any steps to implement it. So I'm sure there's going to be litigation around it and we'll see how that goes. So it seems like we've gone from the Biden administration kind of trying to make it more
more manageable for people to deal with student loans, the Trump administration kind of pulling back on that? Yeah, there's definitely been a big swing, I guess. One of the biggest challenges that people are having so far since Trump took office is accessing these affordable repayment plans. And that came in response to a court order, which was sort of in response to the Biden administration's big swing, right? So, I mean, I think student loan borrower advocates would argue that
the Trump administration's interpretation of that order is like pretty maximalist and like they didn't have to go as far as they did. But even still, it's, you know, it wasn't exactly like their policy that caused it. It was like the court that, you know, sort of pushed them in this direction. So, yes, we're seeing really big swings in how student loan borrowers like see their future and are being treated and all that. Yeah. Now I want to talk about the whole system, not just about Donald Trump, because like
As much as everyone wants to blame everything on that guy, it's really, he's coming into something well-established and messy to start with. Yes, definitely. Yeah, that is the case. So in the beginning of the book, Jillian, you say like, there's this wrong and pernicious idea that student loan debt is a choice and it'll ultimately benefit the borrower. And I guess I believed it too, or I still believe it, like taking out loans for school while not
ideal is good because college ultimately is a benefit that will help you earn more money. It's an investment in your future. But the book kind of like tears that belief apart. So
So first, why isn't loan debt a choice? Yeah. I think, you know, for me also, before I really started reporting on it, that was the impression that I had too. You know, I was kind of in this like, I don't know, upper middle class milieu of people who like, when you encounter borrowers who have student loan debt, it's like,
They took it on because, you know, they had a choice between two schools. And one, they could have had minimal debt or no debt. One was like a little more prestigious, a little fancier. And they said, you know what, I think it's worth it to take on the debt. And like, that's why they got it. And that's true of some people. But for a lot of people who have student debt, in some cases, it's there's just not an affordable option. Even community college for a lot of students is unaffordable. And then the other thing is, this is like a little bit more like...
cultural, philosophical, I don't even, I'm not exactly sure how you put it, but it's like, they are getting this message, you know, we all are getting this message and maybe it's changing a little bit, but for a long time, you've been getting this message that like, the only way to succeed economically is to go to college. And so I'm going to do whatever it takes. And like, I maybe don't have quite as much information, you know, as, as like,
those people in the upper middle class milieu that I'm talking about, I'm applying to like one or two colleges that I've heard of that are nearby. They tell me I need, you know, to be able to come here, I need to take on loans. And like, this is my way out. And, you know, in that case, it can, it cannot be a choice. And you really unpacked
Yeah.
And you're not even going to get the accreditation you think you're going to get. It's not just that you're pushed into a school and you have to borrow money to go to the school, but it's a good school. It seems like a lot of borrowers are pushed into these schools that are not good schools. Right. That's like a big driver of student debt, you know, is people ending up at for-profit colleges, which are
you know, schools that are, they have an obligation to deliver to shareholders or their bottom line or whatever that is. They're not, you know, solely educational institutions in that way. And yeah, you know, in the past they've used sort of internet marketing, television marketing, all sorts of stuff, you know, to kind of push,
people into those schools to take on debt and not delivered on that promise in a lot of cases. But we even see now like some, you know, nonprofit and public colleges, it's not the same exactly, but you know, they will use sort of like almost lead generation tactics, you know, to get students into certain online programs or things like that. So yeah, like we definitely do see sort of like the marketing and the pushing students in a certain direction happening all across the board too. Yeah.
Yeah, schools are paying marketers to recruit people. Like the more people you bring in, the more money you make kind of a situation. Right. That's for some schools' online programs. And actually that business is maybe starting to falter a little bit. We'll see. Yeah, part of it was like a possibility of regulatory change that maybe will no longer happen online.
with the Trump administration. But yeah, there's this whole business of these companies that they basically partner with schools and they will help them recruit students to their online degree programs. They'll do like the tech behind the scenes. The schools are doing the actual teaching, like the teachers are professors at the school and stuff like that. But, you know, the recruiting, the backend, the admissions is like run by these companies. And so in a lot of
they get a cut of the tuition revenue. Also, veterans seem to be preyed upon even more than most people. Like they're at the top of the list. And I didn't realize that's sort of how it's been for a very long time, like almost since the GI Bill was first passed. Yeah. First of all, when the GI Bill was passed, they kind of like left it open to allow- This was like in the 1990s.
40s? 40s, yeah. They left it open to allow for, I think they called them like commercial colleges at the time, but, you know, for private colleges to come in and get access to this funding. So you had, I mean, at the time you certainly, I'm sure, had like legitimate sort of like trade and training schools, but you also had people trying to take advantage of this new funding. And then once we get into like the modern student loan system, we have the situation called
It's like the 90-10 rule or the 85-10 rule where career colleges have to get a certain percentage of their funding from something outside of the federal student loan program. So like 90-10 would be, they need to be getting at least 10% of their funding from outside of federal student loans. The idea being like, if a school is totally supported by the government loan program, then there's no private market for it. And like, they shouldn't be in business. Right.
But there's been a loophole in that rule that in the 10% that's supposed to be like an indication of market demand for your school, Department of Defense benefits that.
are in the 10%. They're not in the government funding, 90%. So things like, you know, a GI bill would count. And so as such, you know, for a long time, for-profit colleges would like really go heavy on recruiting veterans to like stay in compliance with this. And then they would also, in a lot of cases, charge them more than their benefit would cover. So then they would end up taking on student loans too. Yeah.
When you talk about the modern federal student loan system, what is it? What are you talking about? Okay. So about 60 years ago, Lyndon Johnson signed a law that created our student loan system. The idea was that it's a balance or a tension between that
people get an individual benefit and that the government also benefits. So we're asking students to take on the debt because this degree is going to benefit them. But we also think that more people going to college are going to provide society with a benefit as well. And so we're going to subsidize it a little bit. When it was initially launched, the way that the loans worked was that
lenders, banks, whatever, they gave out the money and it was guaranteed by the federal government. So if people defaulted, then the banks were not on the hook for that. The government was. In 2010, we changed the system so that now the federal government lends the money all out directly to students. So your loan is from the Department of Education. That was a big deal because...
Yeah, that was a bit. So people had been fighting for that for a very long time or fighting over that, I should say, I guess, for a very long time. Sort of all the entrenched interests in the current system, the, you know, kind of the lenders, these nonprofit or state backed organizations that like facilitated the government guarantee. They're like these middlemen. You know, they were very interested in keeping it the way that it was. But the Obama administration at the time argued if we move to direct lending, that's what they call it.
this would save us a bunch of money. Yeah. The federal government can borrow for much lower rates than the private sector. It never really made sense in the first place. Right. So they switched to that system. Good job. When they switched though, even some of the sort of like the legacy organizations that were in the student loan system previously were able to like maintain a foothold in it by sort of, you know, they're like,
employers in their congressional districts or whatever. And they would say, we're going to lose a bunch of jobs if you do this. And so a lot of them got written into direct lending as the servicers. So they're the companies now that manage the bill payment and stuff like that. So even though the government is like doing the lending directly, like a lot of the companies, or they're not all companies, some of them are like nonprofits that you call to get help or that you pay your bill to were in the historical federally backed system instead of total federally backed.
lending system. Is that a problem? So the federal government is the one making the loans, guaranteeing the loan, but there's an outside company servicing the loans, collecting payments. That seems like it could be fine. Is there an issue with that? On its face, no, I don't think there's an issue with that. It's like the government can't do everything. I think part of the challenge that a lot of borrowers and advocates have with these organizations is they end up
steering, in some cases, they'll steer people in the wrong direction or they'll, you know, give people bad information such that the student loan takes longer to repay or the borrowers aren't able to access benefits that they're entitled to. And the servicers would say, which is also true, that the economics of the contracts are not great. You know, they don't make a lot of money doing this. It's like a volume business. You know, so there's kind of a lot of mismatch there or questions about how to make that all smoother for borrowers. Let's take a quick break and we'll come right back.
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And so to go back to Lyndon Johnson, he, you know, he wanted us to have our great society. And I think he talked a lot. And at the time, people talked a lot about you invest in people's education because it's good for the country. You know, it helps nurture talent. It's good for science. It's good for America. But it seems like over time, that line of argument just, it just like started to fade.
go away? What happened? Like, was there a moment when it really changed in your book? I don't know if there was like a moment exactly, you know, but I think there was sort of a lot of different things building for a while, kind of competing with the idea of the government.
giving out money to students in the form of Pell Grants was the idea that you do like tax advantage savings accounts. So you sort of put the onus on people to save, but you give them a little bit of a benefit for doing it. So you turn this into, you know, to their responsibility. And that really, that benefits people who have money, who can actually... Right. People who have the money to save. Yeah. Which is, you know, I was talking to someone about this recently, but like saving for college is...
when you think about on the priorities of saving for things, you know, assuming you have money to save, it's like, it's probably coming after like retirement, emergency saving, you know what I mean? So you have to have a lot of money to save. And then one thing I track in the book and look at is that kind of at the same time that the demographics of who attends college changed, we saw states, you
and the federal government to a certain extent, like pulling back on funding it. So, you know, over time, colleges got a lot less white and got a lot less male. And we saw the government subsidy for schools and students kind of decrease during that period. It's like, that could be a coincidence. It could be
not. But either way, it's like unfortunate that as colleges have gotten more diverse, like the financial risk to attending them has gone up. Yeah. And you talk about Ronald Reagan when he was governor of California and how he sort of presided over this big turn, I think. I feel like he's sort of emblematic of the whole thing in cutting funding for the public, the university and college system in the state, which was really robust and
really inexpensive. People were able to go to school for very little money. But then, like you said, demographics were changing. Universities became sort of the locus of all these protests, Black Panther protests, civil rights protests. Yeah, I think calling it a coincidence is generous on your part. It seems like something major was happening, a big backlash. Yeah.
Can you talk about that, what Reagan did in California and how that sort of developed over the decades since, I guess? Yeah. I mean, California, there was sort of this like slow-ish march from we're not charging tuition. That's like a huge value of the state public colleges to we are going to charge tuition. And it began with Reagan and he, you know, he sort of tied the arguments to charging tuition to
his dismay, I guess, at what he was seeing on college campuses, which was like, you know, like you said, Black Panther protests, Vietnam War protests. And he kind of used rhetoric to just like undercut what was, you know, what was going on at these schools and to make taxpayers, you know, think to a certain extent that like,
they weren't worthy of investment, that if you let people go for free, they're just going to like freeload and do, you know, protest and, you know, and not study or whatever. So that was a really big shift. And eventually, you know, they did start charging tuition. We also see Reagan, like once he's president, the Reagan administration on the federal level, try to shift the thinking about student loans to sort of more to the individual responsibility area. So the
portraying borrowers as trying to get around their obligations, using student loan money for like spring break or things like that, raising a lot of concerns about like fraud and abuse in the Pell Grant program. So like,
creating this fear that there were people who were getting Pell Ransa, like were ineligible or not deserving or whatever. So yeah, Reagan is sort of like a big character in terms of the shift of how we think about this stuff. I was reading that in your book and I was just really struck by the parallels to Donald Trump right now and the Trump administration and Doge. I mean, even as you're saying, you know, want to get rid of waste and fraud. We don't want to give money to schools that are harboring, you know,
rioters. I mean, literally this is what is happening now. And sort of kind of, I don't know, it blew my mind a little bit. It was like, we're still doing this? Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting too, because in terms of the levers that like politicians have to pull on things in education that they do or do not like, I mean, the lever is money. So, you know, that's kind of like how you're able to get out your opinions and kind of punish political opponents and all that.
And at the same time, the federal government is making this all harder. The rhetoric that you have to go to school to earn more money is like increasing maybe until recently. But the reality is, and so many of the people you talk to for the book, like
They go to school, they get a graduate degree even, and they're still earning like $35,000 a year, $40,000 a year. They're not able to pay back their loans. And it just seems like the promise of college leading to higher income is not panning out for a lot of people. Even though when I look at the data, it's like unemployment rates for college graduates versus everyone else. And they're much lower and salaries over time seem to go up. So I was kind of like,
Make it make sense. Right. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think first of all, on average, it is definitely true that if you go to college, it is better for you economically. That's definitely. You're not disputing that. I'm not disputing that. I think on average, it's like definitely true. I think that the challenge is, you know, there's a few things going on.
One is we kind of saw in the wake of the Great Recession in particular, this move from employers to take advantage of the glut of people looking for jobs to require degrees and not necessarily pay for them. So if a degree is on the job description, you're maybe less likely to be unemployed if you have one, but it doesn't always translate into the money that it takes to make the debt.
serviceable. That's number one. I mean, another thing that actually, I think I wrote about all the way back when we were together at HuffPost was that part of the issue is that the value of just going to high school has sort of plateaued. So it's like not so much that college is like worth so much, it's that not going to college is worth very little. So I think it's really like
you're protecting yourself in a lot of ways by going to college, even if it requires this like big investment. And then I think the other thing that is mixed up in there, right, is like,
the cost of school, which is, you know, sort of related to some of these like funding things that we've talked about. And then also just like the challenge of managing the debt itself. In theory, it's not necessarily bad to have some student debt to get this benefit of having the degree. It's more that like the debt can be more expensive than we thought it was going to be. And then also just like hard to manage as a kind of like monthly bill or like consumer financial product. What do you
What do you mean? So there's evidence that there's like a lot of people who actually aren't paying down their student loans. You know, they're current, so they're not like defaulting or delinquent, but they're putting payments toward the debt and it's just not going down. And that's partly because of like the structure of the loans themselves.
But, you know, a lot of that has to do with high interest rates. And then there's all these benefits that we were talking about that can be confusing and hard to access. And then on top of that, the consequences for falling behind on a student loan are really punitive. And they can be, in some cases, like more punitive than other types of consumer debt. You know, it's notoriously difficult to discharge a student loan in bankruptcy. Yeah.
Startle student loans have no statute of limitation. You can be sued over them forever. They can take your social security or your tax refund over it, which, you know, for a lot of consumer debt, you might need a court order for. So it's just like the consequences to falling behind can be really severe in some cases.
That's because you're the asset, right? You can't repossess the education. Right. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I mean, if I were to create a system from scratch, I would make it as simple as possible. Like going to high school is simple. You just live where you live and you go and your parents sign you up and then...
That's it. Why can't college just be like that? Yeah. And I think, I mean, part of the argument that I make in the book is, you know, the title, right? Sunk cost. It's like, if you know about a sunk cost fallacy, right? You invest a lot of time and money, energy into something. You maybe realize it's not going super well. And then you, but you keep doing it anyway because you already invested so much in it.
And we're kind of in that mode with student loans. It's like, this is how we've done it. There's like an entrenched constituency kind of interested in keeping it that way. And then to revamp it also would just take an act of Congress, which is, you know, not something that's really on the table right now. And so the result is like you have executive branches sort of trying to tweak stuff. And that's, you know, where we get this whiplash that we're talking about. There was even whiplash from Trump 1.0 to Biden to now Trump 2.0. So, yeah.
There's just a lack of political will, imagination, et cetera, there to make it easy, like you said. Yeah, a lack of political will and this really, this pernicious belief that maybe goes back to Reagan, but probably before that,
This is an entitlement that people have to scramble to get. That seems bad too, Jillian. I don't like that. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that you, there's a few more things I need to raise with you from this book. The other thing you bring up is like, even back before the student loans, even back before the GI Bill, going to college as initially conceived when it was just like white guys going to Ivy League schools, they were just finishing school.
Right.
Yeah, on some level. I mean, we have a lot more schools now, and so there's schools that take everyone and, you know, et cetera. The good schools that people, like, want to see on your resume that get you into places. Right, but yes. Yeah, but if you're talking about tip-top schools, we see rich people are overrepresented at those schools. Not even, like, necessarily rich people, though that's true. Like, talented people.
people, you know? So like, it's like they make the, the schools kind of like make the argument that they're minting the success, but actually it's like the people who are entering, they were already successful, you know, before they got there. So whether that, you know, that's a sort of wealthy person who has a really good network or that's like a low income person who did really well in school and et cetera, it's like they already proved that they're going to be successful and
the school is maybe like a little bit additive, but yeah, they're just, they're kind of like in a lot of ways, clubs for people who are already going to do well. You mentioned your experience at, where did you go? Columbia Business School? Columbia Business School, yes, yes. People just like not even really caring about lectures or anything. Yeah, right. And that's like a particularly extreme version, you know, is the elite business schools. Part of this sort of like finishing school thing that you were talking about is like, it's like a partnership between the schools and the employers. And so business school is like,
that's where that partnership really still exists a lot today right it's like you have the employers coming to campus to recruit things like that and so at Columbia and that other top business schools they have this thing called like grade non-disclosure where they don't tell employers grades until after they've given an offer what I mean I can't believe I didn't realize that that's
wild. Yeah. That's not across business schools. It's like really at the fancier ones, honestly, like they don't all do that. And so that allows students to focus really on like recruiting and networking and all that stuff and, and a little bit less on the academics. And I will say not to drag Columbia, like I had the freedom to really focus on the academics and I had like really good professors and I learned a lot and you know, and all of that, but that's like
not necessarily what the incentive was. And the reason it's allowed to be that way is because like, there's still this kind of like partnership between employers and top schools where it's like really the big test was getting it, you know, and then once you got in, it was like, you're probably going to get a good job at the end.
And then the last thing I wanted to talk about, because it was sort of personal for me too, also involving, I'm sorry to Columbia University. They're going through a lot right now. They don't need us giving shade on money talks. They're just an example of something. But I went there for graduate school for political science. And I remember when I got there, everyone talking about like, this program's a scam. And I was like, it's Columbia. Right. Right.
What do you mean? Right. But you had to get a loan for the one-year master's program. But I was in classes with PhD students who were there on fellowships for a five-year program and on a career track and all that. And I was like, wait, this is a scam. But at the same time, when I finished and I was interviewing for jobs, I mean, just having Columbia University on your resume, it just puts you in another realm. You get called back. People talk to you. They assume you're smart, all of it. And then I'm reading your book.
And I'm realizing, oh, like I was at the top level scam for the Columbia master's. Like at least it did give me that credential. But like master's programs generally that aren't really useful to people beyond medical school, law school, maybe even business school have really exploded recently. And that's because of the federal loan issue.
program? Arguably. So in the mid-2000s-ish, Congress made the decision to get rid of the cap on loans that people can borrow for graduate school. So that means right now you can borrow up to the cost of attendance for graduate school from the federal government. And when they did that, there wasn't much discussion about it. They just kind of did it in part because
the programs that people were in were like what one source described to me as like recognizable. So things like doctor, lawyer, et cetera, you know, and they thought, well, these people like, why shouldn't they have a little more liquidity to do this? And they'll probably pay it back. And like, that's good for the government too. If they pay it back quickly, these people make a lot of money.
But what happened is partly in response to that change and in response to a few other regulatory changes that the government made was that schools responded by really like expanding their master's degrees. And so like you see this huge growth in master's degrees. We're at a point where like in a few years, the Department of Education predicts that it will be.
lending more money for graduate school each year than for undergrad, even though grad students make up something like 20% of borrowers. And so, yeah, it really like fueled this increase in graduate degrees and in graduate degrees that have like a tenuous tie to the labor market. So like in subjects that,
Maybe there's not a clear path to a job. That's one way. And then in others, for example, in our profession, journalism, where it's like it may actually, yes, really help you get a job. But in terms of the economics of what journalism pays and the amount of debt you might have, it just...
Makes no sense. Right. It just may not add up. But it does make sense because without it, it's really hard to get these jobs apparently. Well, right. And like you were – you know, your experience with Columbia that you described. Like if you go to a Columbia journalism school, like that is a ticket. Yeah.
Jillian, so good to see you. I haven't seen you. I mean, we're just talking virtually. I haven't seen you since HuffPost where we both worked, as you said earlier. So thank you so much for coming and talking about your new book. I'm so excited about it. Thank you so much for having me. It was great also to see you virtually after so long. And that's our show for the week. Thanks to Jessamyn Mollie and Shaina Roth for producing. Ben Richman is Senior Director of Podcast Operations. And I'll be back in your feed on Saturday along with Felix and Elizabeth for a regular episode of Slate Money. And until then...
Thanks for listening.