That makes it unsecured debt which carries an interest rate on par with a cash advance on your credit card. It will make loans less affordable for everyone. Everyone who thinks this is such a great idea should take a chunk of their own savings and loan it to some random 18 year old.
If you are willing to acknowledge it's silly to loan "chunks of money" to "random 18 year olds," then it sure doesn't make it a good idea just because we can establish guaranty for the money on the "random" kid's hide.
As for the editor, he is doing ok for the position if he hit 45-60k, and it drops hard if he leaves the area.
I was going to respond to several things, but then I kept finding ysette9's posts, which covered almost everything.
I don't understand the interest argument... if rates come from Dept. of Ed, rates go where the Dept puts them, no? Of course, make bankrupty wipe student loans from Dept. of Ed and you have a funding problem requiring immediate attention. Make bankruptcy wipe private loans and you have an interest problem requiring immediate attention. Make bankruptcy leave student loans intact, and you have a "poison the educated of the next generation against the social compact" problem requiring immediate attention. It seems we should all be able to agree SOMETHING, RIGHT NOW, requires immediate attention, no?
How is it exclusively the 17-year-old's fault for irrationally chasing "gobs of money as long as you go to college - else you pump gas, kids!" nonsense that the adult leadership kept telling them, and it's not maybe slightly more the adults in leadership roles who dropped the ball?
Naive 17-year-olds make bad choices. (say they deserve badness, if you must)
17-year-olds left in the worst possible position to inherit the society (badness as needed)
They're angry about it (you turn a deaf ear if you want)
They inherit it anyway (this you can't prevent)
They turn 18, 19, 20, 21, start voting, running for office... (you also can't prevent this)
"DAMN KIDS! I ignore their complaints for years because they deserve everything they get, and they mobilize against me and my vision of society? How dare they! Things were better in this other period I prefer to remember! Also music stopped being good at whatever year I turned 20!"
We should do better than this, and we're going to have to, or we can all just be grumpy when it's our turn, I guess. How about instead of caring because it's fuzzy and nice, maybe we care a little because it makes for a much better society? It's, you know,
way more functional?