Paying student loans is, for many, a bad idea. Sure, your credit is wrecked, but if you have no income to base payments on, you don't get credit anyway (unless the TBTFs are inflating another bubble and need warm bodies). And it's not like a good job is bound to happen, since an increasing number of US jobs pay in the minimum-wage ballpark - whether you have a degree or not. The bottom line is that we are at the point that from an actuarial perspective, a college degree has become not worth the money, which means means that aside from the schools that are assured of the children of the rich, the entire university system is primed to collapse. And although cancellation of all student debt (most of which is going to wind up defaulted on, anyway) would serve as a huge fiscal stimulus, that's not going to happen, since in the current political climate it's the wealthy who are given large sums of public money while the poor are begrudged their food stamps.

Well, I think she's partly right. The problem is that people are not careful about the loans. they take out loans to study stuff that most people can figure out aren't in demand. There isn't a lot of demand for journalists and directors, so it was kinda dumb to take out lots of loans for something that isn't in demand. Do your homework, people. Arts, Gender/Ethnic studies and Philosophy are more or less vanity degrees unless you're like 1% of the class. The colleges are a-holes for not telling you that there's little demand for your skills in the workplace, but you didn't really think about it either. You didn't think about the day after you got the diploma, you didn't calculate how long it would take to pay back the loans, you didn't look at the demand or the pay for what you'd be doing. If you go into any loan blind to the risks, you're asking for trouble.

That said, yeah, the loans are so high that most people will be loan slaves. The cost of college is almost impossible to pay back, but without the loans you can't go to college and without college you can't get a good job.

Is this the same Dukie porn star that went to Moscow to become editor of the newly defunct Moscow News? She decries the high cost of education here and the burdens of repayment? Those financial burdens affect her just how,........in Russia? .........Some cheese with that whine?