While public commentators herald the arrival of the Canadian “student debt crisis,” psychological research into postsecondary student debt proliferates. This study explored the ways in which indebted students themselves understand the meanings and implications of student debt in their own lives, by means of semistructured interviews with nine indebted university students. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach to analysis yielded six themes: indebted by necessity; haunted by distressing thoughts and feelings about debts; living under the pressure to repay debts; living a constrained life; feeling alienated from others; and uncertainty about the meaning of university education. Findings suggest that student debt is characterized by the experience of feeling unable to “live one’s life,” and of looking toward a fragile future after university. By grounding the psychological experience of debt in the socially embedded, historical realities of students’ everyday lives, this work suggests implications for critical psychological understandings of financial subjectivation.

尽管公众评论员预示着加拿大“学生债务危机”的到来，但对高中生债务的心理学研究激增。这项研究通过对九名负债大学生的半结构化访谈，探索了负债学生自己如何理解学生债务在生活中的意义和含义。一种解释学的现象学分析方法产生了六个主题：必然性；困扰于债务的思想和感情；生活在偿还债务的压力下；过着拘束的生活；感到与他人疏远；和关于大学教育意义的不确定性。调查结果表明，学生欠债的特征在于无法体验自己的“生活”，以及对大学毕业后的未来充满脆弱感。