College is insanely expensive in the United States, of which, how much a given person has to pay for their college tuition and its associated expenses, depends a lot upon how fortunate or unfortunate that person is in selecting their college to begin with, its direct cost, its affiliated costs, and so forth. In addition, like many things, how much one student is paying for tuition at the exact same college varies considerably, from basically free, for those fortunate enough to get a scholarship that covers everything, to those that pay the absolute full freight, with no discounts for anything, whatsoever.
In any event, good or bad, this government has consciously made a determination that college for just about everyone is a good thing, so that the loaning of massive sums of money to young adults so that they can attend school, get an education, and receive their degree is considered to be basically a good and desirable thing. Then, in theory, these students will obtain employment, in which over a period of years, they will subsequently pay off their student loans, while making more income than they would have, if they had not attended college in the first place. That is the theory, works for some, and most definitely doesn't work for others.
When it comes to student loans, before one is initiated in the intricacies of them, a given student might properly reason that student loans are for college tuition, college books, a college dormitory room, and other expenses pretty much directly associated with the attending of a given college. If that was true, that would be one thing, but in point of fact, many student loans appear to be given to students, like candy to a little kid, so that rather than a check barely covering all the reasonable expenses a given student would have for attending their college, there can be a massive differential between the amount of money really required for their tuition, and the amount of monies received by the student, and therein lies the rub.
Most students attending college are, for the first time, without direct parental supervision, and are now considered for the first time to be adults, in which, many are lacking in ready capital and forethought. Their youth and their disposition, has a tendency to make them desire to get as much money loaned to them, for good purpose or not, simply because in their youthful naiveté, they equate money being placed into their hands, without having to labor for it, as free money, never consciously recognizing that it is not a gift, but a loan, with attendant strings and responsibilities attached to it.
The one thing that you can count on when it comes to collegiate students is that when you hand them excess funds, they are not taking that cash, and saving it for a rainy day, but instead, they are going to spend, spend, and spend. The positive to society for students that like to spend money is that because the economy grows not on its savers of capital, but on those that actually spend their money, borrowed or not, on tangible things, that the sheer amount of money that has been borrowed by these young adults, helps to grow consumption of our GDP, the caveat being, though, that those attributing to that growth, are for the most part, not contributing from their income, but from loans and their future, as yet to be determined, income.
This means that when and if student loans are paid off or paid down, that there is correspondingly less consumption now being made by those that have borrowed the money in the first place, which becomes a drag onto the economy. So that, it can be argued, that the reason student loans have grown so much and so fast over the last generation, is a reflection that the short-term interests of those that provide and benefit from such loans, supersedes the long term consequences of providing such easy credit to those, that aren't typically disciplined enough to be prudent with it.