At the same time that Congress is trying to keep the federal government from shutting down at the end of this week, it’s also facing a deadline to keep the United States from defaulting on its loans — a never-before-seen outcome that would impact higher education, and the economy over all, in disastrous but still mostly unknown ways.
It’s all the result of the debt ceiling, which is a restriction on how much money the federal government can borrow to pay its obligations.