Belief in the potential of the younger generation causes the previous generation to shirk everything they know about financial reason and take on massive amounts of student loan debts, argued New York University professor Caitlin Zaloom in a lecture on Friday. The lecture, titled “American Oikos: Finance, Family, and the Student Loan Crisis,” was held as the eighth annual Robert Hunt Lecture in Economic Anthropology.

Zaloom, whose works include “Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London,” described her work as focusing on the “relationship between U.S. households and the financial industry through the lens of student debt.”

Toward the beginning of the lecture, she told a story about a former student of hers who had come to her in tears because she was offered a high-paying job that she feared she would be forced to take — even though its primary responsibilities conflicted with her personal beliefs — for the sole reason that she needed it to pay off her student loan debts.

This fate is not uncommon, Zaloom explained. Average debt per borrower in 2015 was $35,000, with 71 percent of students graduating from four-year colleges having some amount of student loan debt. The system of student loans is unique in its societal impact due to the repercussions it can have on a student’s career choices and abilities to buy a car, purchase a home or even marry, she argued. These effects, in turn, impact the entire community’s economy via automotive sales and the housing industry, among other things.

Additionally, student loans are something of a misnomer, as the responsibility to pay the loans back can often fall not only on the student but on the student’s family as well, Zaloom added. She told the group that approximately 17 percent of parents take out loans for their children, averaging out to about $31,000 in loans per student. Often, she said, these loans will be the second-largest financial investment a family will make, outside of their home mortgage.

She then touched briefly on historical trends of financialization, which she said could be looked at in two categories: the expansion of industry — the economic boom in United States over the last century — and the rise of the culture of finance for the individual — the notion of self-focused spending for things like education or personal commodities. These two changes, she argued, have “turned culture into a reflection of its own logics [through] expansion of calculative ethos.”

She added that there is a long tradition of Americans thinking of family units as the foundation of society, yet financialization places emphasis on individuality. Moreover, she continued, “financial economy monetizes intergenerational commitments,” meaning that an individual’s dedication to their child or parent is put into terms of their willingness or ability to pay for education or old-age care.

Approaching the topic from an anthropological perspective, Zaloom briefly examined the history of the home economy, going as far back as the ancient Greeks, whose term “oikonomia” is the basis for “economy.” The Greeks, she explained, viewed household management as an important task, with the household operating for the purpose of cultivating its members. To oversee the organization of a household, Zaloom added, was to be virtuous.

Transitioning back toward examining the current student loan debt issue, Zaloom explained that loans like the federal PLUS Loan allow parents to take out debt in their names for the purpose of paying for their child’s education. She explained that throughout her interviews with parents who had taken on such debt, one theme came up over and over again: the parents’ belief that their child was full of potential. This potential — the child’s ability to realize their skills and passions via higher education — proved more valuable to parents than their child’s potential as a wage earner for the family, she explained.

This emphasis on potential, Zaloom argued, makes getting students into the right college and the right atmosphere for development crucial, thereby leading discussion away from the economic realities of which school is actually affordable. “The bonds of love and obligation [make families] ignore the constraints of the purse strings,” she said.

A question-and-answer session followed the lecture. Prof. Sarah Lamb (ANTH) asked about the language the parents used in the interviews to talk about their motives for taking out student loans. Zaloom explained that the interviews ended up focusing almost exclusively on the idea of students’ potential, though she noted that many parents were initially reluctant to talk to her due to societal stigma against talking about money. She added later in the question-and-answer section that this lack of openness on finances made for an interesting dynamic between students and parents, as many students were unaware of their parents’ incomes and debts, despite the fact that these figures were directly impacting them.