steve and others talk about this stuff, it's because why they themselves might never have had this problem,

I won't pretend to come from abject poverty, but my childhood was LEAN. I know what powdered milk tastes like. When I was 12 and got MY FIRST PAIR OF JEANS (as opposed to the clothes my mom had made for us my entire life), one of my older sisters freaked out because she didn't get a pair of jeans until she was 16 and had to pay for half of them.

When I write about poverty, it comes from the lens of my own lean childhood, but really more from my current work at church. I spend a lot of time trying to help people lift themselves out of poverty. Poverty is super complex. There are no easy answers. It is often a learned behavior.

In this context of student loans - I don't feel like I have the street cred to talk about it other than academically. I was fortunate to go to Uni in the mid 90s to a private university that is (strangely) much cheaper than almost every public school I know. I received some grants and scholarships and only had to borrow a little bit. I was fortunate to have a fairly solid understanding of debts and loans - that I took when I was 22.... not when I was 18. Wow - this comment is all over the place. I should probably delete it...

Schools that prey on students and promise things they can't deliver SUCK.

Students who borrow more than they should for an english degree are asking for a life of pain.

The system that has grown like a greedy tumor at the expense of so many people's financial ruin makes me sick.

There are no easy Macro numbers.... but there are some micro solutions that can work for each person.