Would you go finance a $50k car and just think it's OK to not make the payments on it?

A 50k car almost always drives, and you don't risk someone that doesn't like you telling you that you can't get the title after you've paid.

Fair enough, but going into debt for something that has (or will have) no value is an entirely different question.

When I was young and dumb (at least more dumb than I am today) and newly graduated from college, I took a $6,000 personal loan at my credit union to buy a computer workstation, top of the line, with a large monitor, laser printer, the works. This was in the early 1990s. It was stupid, and of course the credit union didn't try to talk me out of it. I convinced myself I would "need" it as I entered my professional career as a software developer.

Of course it never meaningfully contributed to my income, it was rapidly obsoleted, and I was stuck with the payments. But I made them.

That $6,000 would be about $13,000 today.

That is a very manageable amount of debt.

Many people have student debts that are 10-20x that, or more. Minimum payments of thousands of dollars a month, and no ability to discharge them through bankruptcy.

You can take on a few thousand dollars of debt as a young adult, realize you made a mistake, grind to pay it off and chalk it up as a life lesson.

We are letting young adults today make mistakes that they will never get an opportunity to learn from, because they will be paying for it their entire life. It is vastly different from your example.

Well the upthread example was graduating with "tens of thousands" in debt, which really should be managable for anyone who completes a worthwhile degree. Again, that's a new car, something most people pay for in 4-6 years.

The fact that you can get easy loans into six digits to pay worthless schools for worthless degrees is a different problem. "Free money" never leads to wise purchases.

I'm not talking about worthless schools -- I'm talking about the Ivy Leagues.

Worthless degrees, yes, but why are we not holding our most prestigious schools responsible for charging outlandish prices for worthless degrees? They are the ones with power misleading young adults who maybe should know better but guess what, they often don't, and that's a mistake but not one that should ruin you financially for the rest of your life.

But yes, you are right that this is not the majority of student loan borrowers.

I hear you, but it's still not analogous. I admit to being less than precise in my prior response, specifically.

A degree isn't a car, nor is it a computer. Nor is it something that you buy. You pay for the privilege to earn it.

The problem is that, during that earning process, an institution has the power to stop you from proceeding with no representation. The only failsafes in place are there to protect the institution.

Specifics as to how this can occur are another deep discussion. The takeaway is that a 50k or 100k USD degree is fraught with inherent risk that, even if unusually realized, merits easier loan terms. Due to the core nature of what a degree is and how it is obtained.

The day that they federally neuter the power of colleges to determine student progress outside of the grading system, or better yet they give students an easy way to gain advocacy, is the day that I will more or less agree with you.