I wish more people understood no one can stop you if there is no one to stop you.

Try getting an apartment or renewing a lease with a truly shit credit score.

Oops, you don't qualify anymore, anywhere, your options are now homelessness, much more expensive hopping between motels every 3 weeks, or live in your car, hope you're still making those payments.

Fairly difficult to cost-effectively cook and store food when you're in any of those situations.

It’s most likely that people won’t have a choice. Many people, anyway, from what I understand of USian wages and cost of living.

This works great up until the point where a collection agency comes for your property and/or credit rating. I'm not saying don't strike, but do it with full knowledge there may be repercussions.

There are no cheaper schools. There are expensive ones and more expensive ones. There is literally no option for the non-rich except to go into debt or learn to be a plumber.

Children are told that they MUST go to college to get a stable and high paying job. This is so prevalent that college degrees are just seen as “the next step after high school” and nobody questions it. These colleges have figured out they can charge almost anything because they are seen as the gate keepers to high paying and stable jobs. So banking on future earnings, bearly emancipated teenagers, with the absolute minimum of a financial education, make life decisions that will put them in debt for the next 20-30 years.

The problem with the whole system is there doesn’t appear to be enough high paying and stable jobs.

As far as going to a cheaper college, I think you identified the issue in your very own comment. Schools have different prestige levels. Yale, for example, is a high prestige school and not only are you paying for an education, you are also paying to connect to rich people. These connections can be worth a lot of money if they are used correctly. So going to a cheaper college also means less valuable connections.

I went to a really cheap school. My master’s was 40k.

There are no such thing as cheaper schools. They got rid of that because they were angry college students protested the Vietnam War. So now getting an education means doing business with the worst loan shark you've ever heard of, legally protected from bankruptcy. The thing you have to understand about America is that everything is a scam. Like healthcare or housing or a child care and a bunch of other things I'm not even thinking about

Same as in the UK I imagine. No university is affordable. Unless you are rich, you can't go without a loan.

Three things going on:

1. Schools are expensive because the amount of public funding to universities has been slowly shrinking over the past 60 years. College in the US back in th 1960s was very cheap.
2. Student loan amounts due did not change, but income based repayment options did which means people's minimum payments went up
3. Students in the US were told college is the only career path for the past 40-50 years. This obviously isn't true and is why we have trades shortages. In many cases, that's also all the advice people received. There was no coaching for what kind of degree to pursue or what field to angle for, so a number of people got expensive degrees that didn't have good career prospects. To be completely honest, I lucked into choosing engineering because of my interests and the interests of my friends

Oh, see - due to the lack of investment in education, the normalization of ever-increasing tuition rates, and the social/economic stratification of U.S. society there isn’t really a thing such as a ‘cheaper’ school.

My local commuter college wanted $25k a year for their masters program over a decade ago - and that’s after obtaining a 4 year degree. (Which I obtained through a combination of community college and undergrad classes at the same university, but not without incurring about $20k worth of debt for the previous 4 years.)

Add to that, the U.S. doesn’t have the economy or social supports. You either earn a living wage, find something workable through familial support, or go hungry. The U.S., mandates that companies pay less than half of what is needed to support one’s self.

This isn’t like, poor planning, or governmental stupidity. This is actually on purpose by conservatives in the U.S. government. (Sorry, that site is kinda weird, but it has the quote I was looking for.)
Nevermind that an educated populous is a matter of national defense/national security and having the brainpower to propel the country forward is one of the ways that the U.S. dominated on the world stage in the latter half of the last century. (In addition to timely and fortuitous control of a lot of resources, and a shitload of foreign meddling - lets be real here.) But whatevz, who needs that when the voters disagree with you? The people who set this in motion will be dead by the time the people that are going to be utterly fucked by that figure it out. (perhaps slowed in that realization by their faulty education. Hah.).

You are post world war germany. Namely 1933. Wake up.

I mean... There's a full article explaining the cause for the increases, it's not like there's no reasoning provided.

My partner was eligible for ~$750 per month repayments under a Biden era plan that Trump scrapped. They now have to pay ~$4300 per month. The headline isn't far off.

Hey now you're forgetting that they're also going short on everything and making money on the fucking way down too!