The one where the government is simply not involved in lending students money.
Situation A: Government offers unlimited amounts of loan money for students. Colleges increase prices since their customers have infinite money. Children and their parents go into further and further debt as colleges keep raising prices and there is no limit to the amount of debt the government will underwrite.
Situation B: Government does not lend any money. Colleges have to keep tuition at affordable levels, and/or obtain funding from government. Children pay an appropriate amount of money for education and don't waste money on fancy gyms and stadiums and catering halls and ceremonies and extraneous administrators.
As I understand it, the government used to lend money for student loans, but it doesn't do so any longer.
"Federal student loans" are nothing more than a public front for private loan companies. Sounds familiar to another intensely politicized system...
My parents told me federal student loans (actually from the government) had a fraction of a percent interest when they went to college in the late 80's, although neither of their families had any money to speak of.
I'm different in that my parents worked their way (along with a fair amount of luck) to teetering on the edge of entering the upper middle class.
They didn't have enough money to send all of their kids to college, but were able to pay for the non-tuition expenses we couldn't cover ourselves on school jobs.
I don't know what student loans would have looked like for a family in an equivalent position in the late 80's.
My main hope is that barring some form of socialized education system happening in the next 20+ years that I'm able to pay for the educations of any future kids of mine without severely hurting myself financially, and succeed in raising them in such a way where they understand and appreciate the gravity of such a thing.
In my mind it's not so much a specific rate being evil, rather that their justification for its rate being unfounded.
The only way to escape a federal student loan is dying. Loan forgiveness is the government paying the creditor. It's not your average unsecured loan you can shirk through bankruptcy.
