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Some of the biggest debtors in the twenty-first century are not small business owners or first-time homeowners, but rather university students who take out massive debt in the belief that it is an investment in their future. Like housing loans before the Global Financial Crisis, student loan debt is today being packaged and re-packaged into exotic financial products called Student Loan Asset Backed Securities (SLABS). This article details the financialisation of higher education and the emergence of SLABS, primarily through a case study of Pine Capital, a wealth management company, that has successfully shorted the market. Using investment reports and Federal Reserve data from the USA, the article outlines the misaligned incentives and miscalculation of risk that allowed Pine Capital to profit. The article then argues that those who are shorting the education market reveal not only an investment opportunity but also a fundamental challenge to the commonplace thinking about education today: higher education is teaching future generations the practices of debt peonage, a key feature of financial capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Founded on several highly influential quantitative studies, the past decade has witnessed the OECD and World Bank increasingly converge on the view that cognitive levels of students and education quality, as proxied by international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), are the primary determinant of national economic growth worldwide. More recent OECD and World Bank pronouncements have further suggested these dynamics are clearly illustrated in East Asia's education and 'Economic Miracle', in particular the cases of South Korea and Singapore. Herein we utilise the OECD's own data to examine this new development narrative, finding little evidence in support of these claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the findings from in-depth interviews with Vietnamese international students studying at Australian universities, this article presents insights into the sociological influences that stem from international students' social networks, at home and abroad, and how they impact on students' aspirations and engagement in international education. Underpinned by Bourdieu's social capital framework, this article critically challenges human capital ideology for its assumptions of individualism and utilitarian function of education as economic goals. The implication for international education providers is to create learning and living opportunities that consider students' social and cultural conditions so as to develop their capacity, self-determination and citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]