Better yet have no admission criteria. What could possibly go wrong?

I've got a feeling that truly poor students aren't bearing this burden, at least not at the top schools. The students really getting killed by this are children with parents who can allegedly afford $50K in annual tuition, i.e. those making $85K and up.

Haha that cracks me up. I owed 80K and my husband owed 90K. ( am hoping after 10 years we have whittled it down a little) We luckily got an extension and now have 30 years to pay them off. We joke that not only do we pay a double mortgage,one on the house and one on the degrees, but we will pay them both off when we are 55. I just hope to have mine paid off before my own kids start college and I have to start borrowing again.

That amount of loans is only available to working and lower middle class kids at the government level. Richer kids have to take private (higher interest) loans and poorer kids get some more grants and scholarships, but they end up owing a lot, too. Really, only rich people can go to school without debt and only upper middle class people can go to school without crushing debt. Children of cops (me) and train engineers (husband) are left trying to find a job that can cover the loans.

Great. Now, rather than recount in detail the burden of making monthly payments on the $30K of student loan debt I'm carrying, I have a buzzy phrase to throw out there when people ask me why I haven't started my business yet.

It seems to me that what we really need is a funding system that taxes graduates as a percentage of their income rather than based on the cost of their education. Those who use their education to make boatloads of dough will pay more while those who go into low-paying public service jobs pay a pittance. It all balances out like health insurance is supposed to.

But when I went to school, my parents, who had recently become middle class after being very poor pretty much their whole lives, could not afford to help me much. Further, I could not qualify for much aid, merely because they were at that time earning too much. So the big schools I was accepted to were off the table.

I ended up one of the lucky ones; with a full-ride scholarship to a state university. (Bless you, NMSC). Many of my peers had no such good fortune. This was ten years ago, give or take, and today the relative cost of school is even higher. I don't believe we ought to consider education a proper place for market economics; instead it ought to be held up as a classic market failure and dealt with accordingly. More kids should have a shot at the free ride, or something very close to it, so that we put the smartest kids (ahem ;]) in positions where they can do some good. If not for that, I would probably be doing much less of it myself.

/inflated head alert=over.

But we all choose what holes to dig ourselves into.

Many of us went to state colleges and lived with Mom and Dad until our late 20's so as to afford college.

If you aren't special enough to get a grant, or a scholarship, you get a loan, and like any debt obligation you make your choice based on your expectations and needs.

If you needed to go to an out of state college and needed to live on campus (or just on your own) then you made that choice and paid for it the only way you could.

Please don't complain to those of us who decided that such luxuries as on campus living and dorm room buddies were luxuries we couldn't afford.

We know we missed out on that special advantage that you got by getting the "full college experience", and we'd appreciate it if you didn't complain about the fact that you didn't get it for free.

I just know too many people who went to really fancy schools and got degrees in crazy, useless subjects only to go to work for non-profits or some low-paying media job – when these people bitch about their student loans they always seem to also be bragging about where they went to school (re: Williams, Wesleyan and Penn). Meanwhile – I went to a nice but not so fancy school, got a useful degree and settled into a very employable and well-paying career. I planned well while others didn’t. Do I get a medal?

I think it’s irresponsible for a student to study subjects that make them unemployable while taking out all these crazy loans that they don’t have any plan to pay off. As my grandfather would have said: get a job, hippie!

Much like what I was planning to write, but with more compassion towards those harboring the delusion that they are entitled to all the life benefits they can imagine on someone (anyone) else's dime. Ahh, there's the snark.

I think we need to include in this discussion the proliferation of "for profit" educational institutions.

In my field (clinical psychology), you can obtain your PhD from a university based doctoral program or a "professional school." University based programs are highly competitive, take small classes (class sizes of 5-10 are not atypical), offer tuition wavers, and support students with stipends in exchange for work as a research assistant or teaching assistant. Students do graduate with debt, but usually it is manageable (I took out $10,000 in student loans). Depending on their productivity during grad school, upon graduation, students are eligible for employment in a variety of fields, clinical work, academia, and a variety of private sector jobs.

Contrast this with professional schools that take large classes (50-100), have little to no criteria for admission, don't support their students, and charge exorbitant tuition (you may see an advertisement for one one of the schools on this very webpage). Many of those students graduate with an excess of $100,000 in debt and make up a disproportionately large share of those who fail licensing exams each year-an indication of poor training. This is particularly problematic in that clinical jobs are really their only venue for employment because, they are not eligible for most jobs in academia, and the glut of Psychology PhDs, PsyDs and MAs have driven down the wages of psychologists.

I mentor undergrads and warn them about predatory graduate programs. Most heed my words and stay away (mostly, I suggest they go into social work). However, some students (and their parents), are focused on the "prestige" of being "Dr. Schmoe," that they cannot be dissuaded by logic. As with most things, assigning fault is a complicated business.