Credit card debt is a serious problem in America, to which nerdwallet.com states that:
"Americans have $703 billion in credit card debt alone, according to June 2015 data from the Federal Reserve." As bad as that is, it actually gets much worse for the staggering amount of American student loan debt to which nerdwallet.com states: "student loan debt has skyrocketed to nearly $1.2 trillion." This means, that with the exception of mortgages for homes, student loan debt is the highest category of debt in America and is still growing at unprecedented rates, whereas salaries, on the other hand, have nearly stagnated, as reported by thinkprogress.org, "Compensation for the median worker… grew just 8.7 percent between 1973 and 2014, or a 0.2 percent annual rate. Yet net productivity grew at a 1.33 percent annual pace in the same time." This implies strongly that students that have been getting educated at higher education institutions are suffering from the double whammy, of educational costs far exceeding inflation in an era in which compensation has basically flat-lined; hardly the formula for success or for the capacity to pay back student debt.
Not too surprisingly, with all the bills that people have to pay to begin with, just to live and to function in America, student loans are exactly the type of burden that many former students do not have the income or capacity to pay. This inability to pay these loans is not something that is just temporary, but often is something endemic, as in, the funds will never be there to pay back loan amounts that can even exceed $100,000, for people that at best, can sort of make ends meet. In America, there were over 800,000 bankruptcies filed in 2015, of which, when debt is being discharged, the most significant debt that a substantial amount of people will not be able to discharge in bankruptcy, is student loan debt, which is hardly the basis for a real fresh start.
While there are exceptions for discharging student loan debt, to actually qualify for any of the exceptions is exceedingly difficult, as you must pass the "undue hardship" test, which is something that the courts have consistently frowned upon. It is true, though, that there are other ways to discharge student loan debt, sometimes through disability, or also through employment with a particular government agency which will after a period of time, forgive a debt, in return for the service that you have provided as an employee to them, but basically student loan debt, for the vast majority of people, is debt that you will carry with you, to your grave, and only upon your death, is it discharged.
While there are a lot of reasons why student loan debt has risen at such a staggering rate in such a short period of time, the two must fundamental reasons, are that education for a significant amount of people is significantly overpriced, in addition, a significant amount of student loans are backed by the full faith and power of governmental agencies, which in effect, means, that those giving out such loans, sell them to other lenders and/or organizations, and thereby get their monies up front.
This means, in effect, that student loans are actually, when you get right down to it, basically the selling of an overpricededucational product to young credulous people that often don't have the knowledge or capacity to really comprehend what they are committing themselves to, but think they are committing to getting themselves a good higher education which will then allow them to attain the American dream, whereas in reality it's often just a high stakes flimflam job, where the students are the suckers, whereas the sellers of the dream are getting very rich and very fat fleecing the student body, again and again, leaving those students overburdened with debt that they cannot ever escape from.