>>>I don't have easy solutions, but agree that we need to find a way to lower the debt load of kids coming out of college.
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>I's not just the US: student debt is becoming a norm even in Socialist gulags. E.g. I was privileged to earn my medical degrees at a time when my annual tuition fee was $99 which I paid out of my weekly student allowance of $27 that was automatically paid to me because I was alive and at school. $27 was a lot of cash in days when you could have a room in a student hovel in Otago for $11/week or a jalopy for $200. These days tuition fees are into the thousands annually and unless you can live at home with well-heeled mum and/or dad, young doctors can be saddled with as much as $100K of debt when they finish. Yep, I'm part of that greedy generation that accepted all of society's largess and then pulled up the ladder after ourselves. At least I don't add insult to injury by scolding others that since I could graduate without debt, they can too.

My financial aid package freshman year was a mix of grants and loans and came out to just enough over tuition that I had $15 per week left for pocket money, which went for lunches and transit. (Because I was 15 when I started college, I commuted, so didn't have room and board cost.)

Tamar