It should be affordable as it puts even students from middle class or higher in a bind as well.

To be honest my parents are too wealthy for me to get government assistance and my parents pay for most of of my school and I am thankful for that.

If they did not I would have to work full time hours and go to school....or work part time on the pole or something and before you laugh I know some girls who do and that is the only way for a millennial to pay fully for school these days..

Graduating this Wednesday... ~50K debt.
Yeah it's a problem. Tuition is so high even for state schools and those dumb fees they tack on.
Already getting the email about paying back my loans, nice.

STEM field degrees tend to be worth the expense, anything else is usually an utter waste of time. Frankly, succesful college careers are built more on networking than study by and large.

Hey now, the pole can be a noble calling, and I have helped put several girls through school with my personal scholarship fund.

I have 3 friends who do and they do well. 

Just try to keep the away from cocaine, that tends to throw a monkey wrench in many a stripper's college career.  Ex is fine though, because it's fucking amazing, but stay away from molly, it's bullshit.

Starting your career approx. 1/4 million dollars in debt, jesus you must really have a great plan for getting that cash back when you graduate. That is insane you could have 2 houses for the same amount and be happily renting one of them out to pay the mortages on both.

Just a thought, but damn I genuinely hope that everyone who goes into a level of debt for education which involves the word "million" in any way really has an end game plan lined up.

Many people will never pay it off, so they'll be trapped in a cycle of paying for tuition. What happens when so many people are endlessly paying off their tuition? They buy a lot less. In a consumer-based economy, many people not buying would be disastrous. It would also probably prevent manymany people from having children, and in a capitalist society that creates a demographic crisis.

At the same time the economy is going for worse, more people are interested in higher degree (going to school is seen as a better alternative than doing nothing), parents also have less money to spend on their kids education and there are less jobs available to take fund your studies with. This all leads to increased student loans.

Back in the day I was at school, people took student loans to buy a new car.

I see this in multiple ways. From Canada btw.

First off we have careers that absolutely no one seems to be interested in - careers in which the current workers are retiring and we need new blood (like plumbing, a well-paying trade that is a necessity but no one really thinks about). We have far too many students getting liberal arts degrees and screwing themselves over. The job market doesn't have room for all those degrees lol they aren't super applicable. So yeah you are gonna have a lot of people stuck in debt of student loans, because their degrees are inapplicable in the current job market. It's a shame too, because there are other areas in the market that are opening up.

Now if we could only stop the abuse of the temporary foreign worker program, maybe those of us with degrees would be able to find employment

It should be affordable, I don't understand how the cost can rise so much, there is no costs to the school beyond paying the professors and building maintenence/taxes. What makes the price go up so much every year?

But to the people that want or think their debt will be forgiven, let me be the first to tell you that will never happen. College shouldn't and will never be free, otherwise it will be abused, how will free college sustain itself when anyone can, for any length of time, take unlimited free classes?  Are we building new universities to cover all these people or is it only for new college aged students so anyone over 21 won't be considered but will still be expected to pay for the younger generations free college.  The debt is yours, you earned it, you got free school from kindergarten through high school, at that time you are 18 and an adult and as an adult you have to make decisions and live with those choices. If college were free, you would lose and extra 5-10% of your income to pay for other people's "free" tuition. I paid off my debt 10 years ago by putting all my money on my bills and not living it up for a year and a half. I am not going to lose 10% of my income to make school free for others and with Trump in for at least the next 4 years I would suggest you start paying it down because even if HIllary got in, you are not getting free college or tuition forgiveness.

Nothing is free, nobody is going to eat your 50K in loans, you could have gotten a job that helped pay for college, you could do it online, you have choices.