She means the crippling amount of student debt on students nowadays.
Explanation:
Mehrsa Baradaran has been a vocal activist for the socialization of institutions of study as the hefty fees of these institutions makes people be in debt for most of their young and adult life which hampers their ability to move up the social ladder.
The crippling amount of debt a student incurs when they get a degree from a college is sometimes being paid off even 20 years later if they do not get a good enough job to pay it back and thus it keeps haunting their finances and discourages people from getting degrees.