I also just want to call this out as I do on related posts.

After defaulting on student loans for 9 months, the US Dept of Edu buys them from Sallie Mae (large lender) and puts on huge amounts of interest. If you still default, they sell it to collections agencies, ones that don't give a shit about your income, that add even more interest.

The US will never have free upper education because poor people borrowing money is profitable to them.

And before anyone gets shitty about it being my own fault, I knew nothing about finance and never had money growing up. When it was offered, I took it. They didn't ask me to talk to anyone about it and actually wanted me to get my mom to take out a loan for me. I still owe 50k on 24k worth of loans from 2007 and earlier.