> fully informed, smart people elected to take on and plan for.

In practice, this is completely false. When I was about to graduate not too long ago, there was an entire cottage industry of (perhaps unwitting) propagandists pushing student loans on highschool students as a "no brainer" investment. "You'll make the money back in 2 years, tops! Now go and find yourself"

Placing blame on any of those students who were not able to make the money back quickly and are now struggling is either a display of ignorance or lack of empathy.