Another problem.
Bachelor degrees required for jobs that take a 10th grade education to do well in.
When I was job searching, salaries in the 35K+ were requiring bachelor degrees. Of course there are exceptions, but this seemed to be the norm.
So when you get yourself in a lot of student loan debt a degree, you can look forward to the pride and reward of a 35K salary.
Because we all know getting a bachelor's degree gets you a white picket fence, a house, a new car, 100K salary etc., or wait was that the lie that was spewed from the entire duration of high school? I've had plenty of teachers threaten students they would wind up at McDonald's if they didn't go to college.
It is only very recently that the lies of higher education are becoming known. My sympathy is out to those who believed it before. I think at this point, anyone else getting into student debt deserves what they get. No one should take a step further after high school until they figure out how they are going to utilize their education. Technical training is going to start looking nice.
As I've said in the past, I think the problem with higher education is as much about degree creep as student loans.
Degrees have become mainly about proving you're smarter than the competition in general. In the old days, few went to college, so having a degree was a ticket to the middle class. As college education became more universal, an increasing number of professions, including journalists, clerks, cooks, and health care techs, began "requiring" some sort of college degree. Needless to say, they don't actually require these degrees, except everyone else gets them, so they must get them as well - if not pile another degree on top of this.
We'd be better off by far if we just had people take general aptitude tests for work. They've been shown to be more accurate than education or prior work experience in predicting productivity.
And with more younger adults in so much debt to pay off, they are starting families at a much older age and buying homes.