Anthropologist David Graeber explores the ways debt has shaped society over 5,000 years. [Audio, region-free]

The federal government is on track to forgive at least $108 billion in student debt in coming years, according to a report that for the first time projects the full cost of plans that tie borrowers’ payments to their earnings. The report, to be released on Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office, shows the Obama administration’s main strategy for helping student-loan borrowers is proving far more costly than previously thought. The report also presents a scathing review of the Education Department’s...

From software that records your every keystroke, to GPS tracking, to ignition kill switches—lenders have more power over their customers than ever. 

More than 40% of Americans who borrowed from the government’s main student-loan program aren’t making payments or are behind on more than $200 billion owed, raising worries that millions of them may never repay. The new figures represent the fallout of a decadelong borrowing boom as record numbers of students enrolled in trade schools, universities and graduate schools. While most have since left school and joined the...

It’s not uncommon to fudge some of life’s most sensitive numbers, such as age or weight. But according to a NerdWallet study, consumers aren’t just fibbing a little when it comes to their credit card balances. In fact, government data show them reporting a total of $415 billion less than they actually owe. As of December 2013, lenders reported about $683 billion in outstanding credit card debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

As college graduates begin to enter the real world this month, they can take cold comfort in the fact that just like the last several classes before them, they’ll have the most student debt in history. The class of 2015 will each graduate with $35,051 in student debt on average, according to an analysis from Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of Edvisors.com, a website that provides information to parents and students about college costs...

Now, even less than in decades and centuries past, it cannot be denied that sound and music are deeply embedded in economic and material networks of exponentially increasing complexity. Sound and music are not abstract concerns, floating free from a politically charged context of labor, power and society, and neither are the messages and joys they bring. It is dependent on, determined by, and reflective of the work that made it and the world into which it is born.

New data from the U.S. Department of Education shows in unprecedented detail how much federal student loan debt college students from low-income families are being saddled with. Use this interactive database to search among 6,000 schools in the U.S. to see how much they support their poorest students financially.