>>By the time I started paying in the mid-80's, inflation had rendered my payments negligible. I think I paid a total of about $150 a month for four years' worth of loans.
What I see is that we enjoyed affordable tertiary education and huge property inflation and now in multiple nations we seek to pull up the ladder to lock in our gains for the benefit of our own children. Meritocracy is replaced by aristocracy and inherited privilege. E.g. this 2014 paper confirming that poor kids who do everything right shouldn't expect to do better than rich drop-outs:
http://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-sawhill.pdf
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
