Download This PaperThe Promise of Student Loan Debt Letters: A Critical and Linguistic Analysis
28 Pages Posted: 22 May 2020
Date Written: April 25, 2020
Abstract
As the student loan debt crisis has continued to gain national attention from higher education leaders, education policymakers, and the media, states have begun mandating that institutions send student loan debt letters to any current or former student with outstanding student loan debt. Preliminary studies of the effectiveness of student loan debt letters have been mixed, but these studies have not analyzed how institutions have composed student loan debt letters at the word-, sentence-, and document-level. As a result, this study gathered six student loan debt letters sent by different institutions across the United States and analyzed these letters for readability, cohesion, and lexical diversity. Results suggest student loan debt letters have been written in drastically different ways and do not share common vocabulary, possibly confusing the debt repayment process for students. Implications for research and practice are addressed.
Keywords: student debt letters, financial aid, student loans, higher education
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