It's not like people are forced to take student loans.

[frazzled]

2. Age 37 is one thing

What surprises me is that an 18 or 19 year old is able to take out this amount of loans. Who is lending them money? (Hint: it isn't the government.) This is reminiscent of the mortgage scams of the 2000s: giving people loans who couldn't afford them; packaging those loans into complex financial instruments and then selling/gambling with them. Pouf: bubble burst, and someone has made off with a lot of money.

Both my kids took out Stafford loans as part of their college tuition package. A combination of tuition reduction, minor National Merit Scholarship money, and mostly loans that we as parents took out paid for their education. I know for a fact that the government won't lend students money through the Stafford program over a certain amount, the amount increasing over each of the four years. It's not a lot (especially compared with the price of private tuition.) I believe my kids ended up with $10K to $12K of student loans at the end of four years. As parents, we had more, which we're still paying off.

I was asking my daughter-in-law how, then, do you see these stories of undergraduate students graduating with $120,000 in loans? Who is lending to them? She says there are banks that will do it. And that shocks me. This is the crux of the problem, and nobody seems to be talking about it. Help me understand.