대학생은 어떻게 채무자가 되는가?

천주희 연세대학교 대학원 2015 국내석사

본 논문은 2000년 이후, 한국 대학가에 등장한 ‘학생-채무자’ 주체의 형성과정에 대해 탐구한다. 2000년 중반 이후, 한국 대학생들은 ‘등록금 인상, 학자금 대출 증가, 취업난’이라는 시대적 통증을 경험하고 있다. 이 시기 “대학 등록금 1,000만 원 시대”라는 말이 등장했고, 생활비와 학자금 대출금을 갚기 위해 아르바이트와 휴학을 하는 학생들이 증가했다. 대학을 졸업하더라도 위축된 노동시장으로, 안정적인 일자리를 얻기란 어려워졌으며 청년들의 경제적 빈곤화는 가속화되었다. 본 논문은 이러한 현상들을 부채의 관점에서 해석한다. 부채의 관점이란, 사회 재생산의 구조를 부채 메커니즘을 통해 설명하고, 빚지는 대학생들을 “채권-채무”관계에서 독해하는 일이다. 본 논문에서는 새로운 주체를 ‘학생-채무자’로 부른다. ‘학생-채무자’가 출현한다는 것은 이 사회가 고등교육영역을 부채를 통해 재생산하고 있으며, 대학생에게 ‘채무자로서의 삶’을 하나의 양식으로 요구하고 있음을 의미한다. 이때 개인은 노동시장에 진입하기 위해 대학에 진학하고, 재생산에 필요한 기술을 습득한다는 명분으로 빚지는 삶을 수용하는 주체가 된다. 연구 방법론은 심층면담을 통한 문화기술지로, 국내 4년제 대학(원)생 및 졸업생 19명이 연구에 참여했다. 논문 구성은 크게 세 부분으로 이루어져있다. 우선 1,2장에서는 2000년 전후로 한국사회에 ‘학생-채무자’가 출현하게 된 배경을 정치?경제?문화적 변화에서 살핀다. 이러한 변화에서 ‘학자금 대출’을 통해 금융부채가 고등영역과 대학(원)생 개인에게 확장되는 과정을 탐구한다. 다음으로, 3장에서는 1997년 말 “IMF 외환위기” 이후, 가족 재생산의 위기가 자녀의 대학교육에 대한 투자로 이어지는지 살펴보고, 이 과정에서 ‘대학’이라는 시공간이 생애기획에서 어떠한 위상을 차지하며 ‘학생-채무자’를 양산하는 과정으로 이어지는지 탐구한다. 마지막으로, 4,5장에서는 학자금 대출 및 금융부채가 일상이 된 개인에게 ‘채무자’ 주체성은 어떻게 형성되는지 살펴봄으로써, 생애기획에서 부채가 개인의 삶에 구축되는 과정을 비판적으로 사유한다. 본 논문에서는 2000년 전후로, 국가적 경제 위기와 가족 재생산의 위기를 해소하기 위한 전략으로 마련된 금융장치들이 ‘교육기회의 형평성’을 명목으로 대학생 집단을 채무자라는 새로운 금융주체로 만들고 있음을 주장한다. 그리고 이러한 제도?문화적 조건에서 대학생은 ‘학생-채무자’라는 새로운 주체의 형상으로 전환될 것을 요구받는다. 한국에서 대학생의 사회?문화적 위치는 가족에 예속된 존재 혹은 후기 청소년으로 분류되고는 했다. 그러나 학자금 대출이라는 금융계약 과정을 통해 대학생은 독립된 대출 계약자로 금융시장에 참여하게 된다. 그럼에도 불구하고 한국에서 정부에 의한 학자금 대출은 여전히 가족제도를 기반으로 이루어진다. 때문에 학자금 대출의 계약 주체가 학생임에도 부모의 직업과 계층이 대출 규모와 방식에 영향을 미치게 된다. 이때 대학생은 ‘학자금 대출’을 매개로 기존의 사적영역에서 고등교육비용을 부담해오던 ‘가족복지’형태에서 국가와 시장과 복지적 요구가 혼합된 ‘신자유주의 복지’형태로 이행하면서, 국가와 가족 사이에 끼어있는 주체로 출현한다. This thesis explores the formation of the “student-debtor” subject who began to appear on campuses after the year 2000. After 2005, South Korean college students began to experience phenomena distinctive to this era including “drastic tuition hikes, educational loan increases, and high unemployment.” During this period, which saw the appearance of the term, “The Era of $10,000 Tuition,” the number of students engaging in part-time work or taking time off school in order to pay loans for tuition or living expenses dramatically increased. With students finding it difficult to find stable employment after graduation due to the stagnant job market, their economic poverty has worsened. This thesis examines this phenomenon from the perspective of debt. In adopting this perspective, this thesis aims to explain the structures of social reproduction through the mechanism of debt; it also aims to “read” the lives of college students through “creditor-debtor” relations. This thesis identifies this new subject as “student-debtor.” The appearance of this subject suggests several things. It suggests the reproduction of education as a public sphere through debt; it also suggests the appearance of the “debtor life” of the college student as one of the requirements of this reproduction. That is, in order to enter the labor market, college students are required not only to cultivate their skills as workers and manage social risk but also embrace lives as debtors. The research method for this paper relied on ethnographic interviewing of 19 informants including students of undergraduate, master and doctoral degrees. The thesis is comprised of three parts. The first part examines the structural changes and political, economic, and cultural arrangements after the year 2000 when this “student-debtor” has emerged. It also explores the process through which financial debt has spread to the field of higher education and among the population of college students through the product of “tuition loan.” The second section explores how the national and family crisis from the late-1990s to the early 2000s has driven college students into the time-space of “college”―giving rise to the “student-debtor” subject. With the twin entities of “college student” and “family” becoming inseparable during this period, this section examines the meaning-making behind the debt for higher education―focusing, in particular, on the question of who claims this loan as “their debt.” Finally the third section provides a critical reflection of the relationship between life planning and debt by illuminating the process through which the subjectivity of “debtor” is constructed for the individual for whom tuition loans and financial debts have become a part of everyday life. Through the cultural ideology of “academic credentialism,” South Korean society has up to now emphasized the importance of higher education. It has also maintained a system that privatizes the costs of higher education through the administrative practice of making the “beneficiary of education” also responsible for its costs. Meanwhile, during the era of military dictatorship from the 1960s to 1980s characterized by the developmentalist state, academic credentialism was pivotal in the class mobility of individuals and reproduction of families. With academic degree the key basis of economic status after graduation, the developmentalist state has relied upon this cultural ideology to cultivate a highly educated industrial workforce and build its industrial base. However, after the 1990s, with the democratization of higher education and growing insecurity of the labor market, the work of recuperating one’s educational investment became more difficult. Despite this difficulty, “academic credentialism” managed to become re-strengthened after the “IMF” financial crisis and the corresponding crisis of familial reproduction in 1997 when it became viewed as the basic means for an individual and family to enter the labor market. On one hand, within a post-IMF context of a nearly absent educational welfare system either from the state or society and public criticism that people should not forfeit their right to education due to economic difficulty, there was a strong push for educational welfare. In order to address this issue of “equal opportunity for education,” the state has eased people’s access to financial debts. At the same time that college students and other low-income individuals―who used to be “non-financial” subjects―faced fewer restrictions to accessing credit cards, tuition loans also became widely promoted. Through encouraging “tuition loans” as one of the financial products within the high education field, the state simultaneously quelled the widespread public demand for educational welfare. Within this thesis, I argue that the financial instruments that were put in place in order to overcome the crisis of nation and family are instead―in the name of “equal access to educational opportunities”―creating college students as new financial subjects of debtors. That is, through applying for a tuition loan, a new financial subject who is able to freely enter contracts is emerging. Within South Korea, however, the different paths for applying for a student loan and the question of whether it will be accepted or rejected are still dependent on a number of factors within the family system such as the parents’ profession, their economic status, and their willingness to embrace a loan. Within this transition from a “family welfare” system―in which the costs of higher education expenses within the previous private sphere are borne by the family through the “tuition loan”―to a “neoliberal welfare” model comprised of the multiple demands of state, market, and welfare, the college student becomes a subject caught between the state and family.