It's a bad time to pass, but they will get rewarded later on. My education debt represented about 50% of my startup salary and I survived, even if my startup salary wasn't even near the startup salary of a doctor.

Even if they have to study/work for 16 years before reaching let say the average salary of 135,000/yr, they will earn that salary for many years. Let say that I enter university at 19. After 16 years of study/work, I'm now 35. I retire at 65. That give me around 30 years of work at 135,000/yr and more. I think it make the first years of "hard time" easier to take.

>Not after paying for (or having to pay back the student loans) 4 years of college and then 4 years of medical school. Then there is the average of 3 years working in a hospital before you are trained. For some specialities, doctors have to work in a hospital for up to 8 years before they are considered trained. Some of those positions will eventually equate to a higher salary, but for the majority 8-9 years of schooling and student loans doesn't make 135,000/yr look very good. Don't forget the very expensive insurance that a doctor has to pay for as well.