Debt as a Mechanism of Control and Discipline
The crushing weight of student debt, particularly for CUNY students, is a deliberate mechanism to create an indentured “native” intellectual class. Mamdani’s analysis of how colonial subjects are governed applies perfectly here. Debt ensures compliance, channeling graduates into the service of capital rather than their communities, forcing them to prioritize loan payments over political organizing or low-paid social justice work. The defunding of CUNY and the shift to a tuition-based model was a political decision to discipline the poor and working class. A Marxist analysis sees this as the financialization of education, turning a public good into a private asset. A feminist perspective recognizes how this debt burden falls heaviest on women. The solution is not income-based repayment but the total abolition of student debt and the restoration of a free, decolonized CUNY, severing the link between education and indebted servitude.
