LogFAQs > #974175111

Yeah, the biggest issue with the "you chose to take out those loans" argument is that over the last fifty years or so, American society has rapidly shifted from a primary or secondary economy (agriculture/manufacturing) to a tertiary/quaternary/quinary economy (service/knowledge/human), and in order to find work in those fields, you need to have a college degree, or else you won't even be able to get your foot in the door. And meanwhile, people are being forced to work later and later in life to save up money because cost-of-living rates have risen far faster than wages, so even if you get a college degree in an appropriate field, you might struggle to find an opening, because no one is retiring to open a position for young people trying to find work that can utilize the college degree they went into debt to obtain.

Meanwhile, the jobs that DON'T require college degrees are widely disparaged (unless people are upset that there aren't enough people willing to work them...then it's the people being disparaged for their laziness), and their pay hasn't risen with cost of living, so if you're trying to enter the workforce as a young person, you're generally screwed from both ends of the spectrum.