Education Without Debt
What Others Are Saying
"The MacDonald Scholarships are another fantastic opportunity for our students at Carolina to receive an excellent education and serve the public good. This book tells Scott MacDonald’s story and the story of so many students across the country who are struggling with the burden of college debt. Institutions of higher education must address this critical problem so that our universities can continue to be engines for economic mobility. We are glad that Carolina’s commitment to access and affordability, and in particular the stories of our students and programs like the Carolina Covenant, is included in these pages."
—Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz // The University of North Carolina
"This book by imaginative philanthropist-businessman Scott MacDonald tackles one of the hottest issues of the recent presidential campaign: the explosion of student debt. Blending smart analysis of its causes with humanizing and empathic stories of the burden this debt places on student futures and lives, MacDonald argues for a mixed plate of solutions that are built on his own creative approach to philanthropy. That approach, which leaves students better off and better people than when MacDonald finds them, is one worth replicating across the country. A must-read for those interested in how to build public-private solutions to one of our nation’s most pressing issues."
—Provost and Executive VP Lauren Robel // Indiana University
"Thanks to Scott MacDonald for his fact finding on the sources of the exploding costs of an American college education and our country’s historic lending practices that have thwarted a financially unencumbered future through education for so many of our youth. The personal stories, starting with the author’s own, are alternately heartbreaking and uplifting motivators for U.S. citizens to individually and collectively rethink the financing of higher education and consider his 9 sets of suggested “what must be done” actions to enable our citizenry to realize the American dream of a better life through higher education while escaping crippling debt and paying it forward as educated leaders of our future society."
—Jacqueline Thousand // Educator and Author
Almost 50 million Americans have cumulatively borrowed more than $1.5 trillion to attend college.
Roughly one-third of all adults aged 25 to 34 have a student loan. In Education without Debt businessman and philanthropist Scott MacDonald examines the real-life impact of crushing levels of student debt on borrowers and what can be done to fix this crisis.
Weaving together stories of debt-impaired lives with stories of personal success achieved with the essential help of financial aid, MacDonald reveals the devastating personal and societal impact of the debt problem and offers possible solutions. He explores the efforts of colleges and private philanthropists to make education affordable and relates his own experience of funding financial aid for need-eligible students at five universities.
Education without Debt is a must-read book for anyone concerned about the rising cost of education and what to do about this critical policy and societal issue.
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Official Kirkus Review:
MacDonald, the author of Think Like a Dog (2019) and a corporate turnaround specialist, observes that the steady accumulation of student debt in America has become unsustainable. In 2018, the total amount surpassed $1.5 trillion with no signs of significant abatement. This staggering figure has caused extraordinary damage, both economically and socially. Homeownership has significantly diminished, and college graduates are putting off marriage and major purchases; they’re also seeking higher-paying jobs, which is a blow to the public-service sector. In this book, the author furnishes a meticulous and accessible account of the ballooning costs of college education, including the steep decline in government aid per student and the ever increasing budgets that are allocated to university administrators.
MacDonald also ably sketches a synopsis of the history of tuition assistance from its beginnings as a function of private patronage to its transformation by the GI Bill following World War II. First-person accounts of struggles with college debt add a touching human element to his analysis by poignantly illustrating the real-world consequences of the crisis. One 18-year-old contributor tells of how the pinch of her financial aid predicament made her first week of college a “mental hell,” as her inability to pay for school made her feel “completely out of control.”
MacDonald doesn’t limit his study to grim diagnoses of problems, though; he also expertly discusses the ways in which some colleges are conscientiously responding to the issue by, for example, offering no-loan financial aid packages. The author lucidly notes that the crisis is not merely a financial one, but also a societal one, in that it “limits an individual’s future choices” as well as the “availability of education as a path to a better life for many Americans.”
An analytically rigorous and movingly impassioned introduction to a major national issue.