NPR broadcast this afternoon an interesting report on this problem. In line with NPR's ideological slant, the focus of the report is "for-profit" institutions of higher education (bad) versus "community colleges," (good) with little, if anything, mentioned concerning private "not for profit" colleges and universities. But the point is still there, and that is that college debt, whatever its source, is a huge drag on the fortunes of young adults.
Years ago, I attended a luncheon (with hundreds of others) where the then US Secretary of Education spoke, William Bennett. He said that federal subsidies of student college costs, whether grants or loans, only drove up the cost of a degree and were, then, self-defeating. In other words, by increasing demand, those programs caused colleges and universities to raise their prices, thus requiring more subsidies and so on. No one paid any attention to his views, as far as I can tell. Now these chickens come home to roost.
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