College Competition and Student Loan Debt

Laura Newland examines the hypercompetitive battle for internships and the economic pressures—student loans, the daunting cost of graduate degrees, high unemployment—at the nation’s elite universities. She argues that these economic pressures have fueled a Wall Street recruiting machine that is winning over the best and the brightest. In Chasing Zeroes: The Rise of Student Debt, the Fall of the College Ideal, and One Overachiever’s Misguided Pursuit of Success, she writes about her own experiences with college debt and the lure of finance, and looks at higher education and the tension between ambition and debt.