That is not very much money. That's a modest new car or a down payment on a small home in a cheap zip code.Sure, as long as people are making a livable, sustainable wage. I know quite a few people who did not manage to rise significantly above minimum wage work coming out of college, it would be interesting to see how that lines up with the amount of debt they came out with.
I think that's a reasonable price for something as unique and transformative as a college experience.
This points to what may be part of a more fundamental issue with the whole higher-education/college arrangement in the USA.
I think that most people are going to be having unique and transformative experiences that help them define who they are and how they see themselves in the world in their late teens through mid-twenties regardless of whether they're in college or not. I doubt that being at college contributes nothing to the experience of coming out of adolescence and into the world at large, but is it adding 5 digits of value? For a lot of folk who viewed college as a necessary stepping stone into adulthood I don't think it has been, regardless of the amount of debt they took on.
In some way, to me, talking about how it's both reasonable for people to take on dozens of thousands of dollars of debt, and how it's really not much of a problem for those with fewer dozens feels off. Especially when a large portion of these people feel like it's compulsory, won't see any benefit for years, and probably don't have much experience assessing investment risks. I certainly didn't have the life experience to evaluate a 20,000 dollar investment with a waiting period of multiple years before seeing any returns when I was 19.
Colleges (and debtors) get to point at people who don't default and attribute their well-being to having attended college, and blame the individual when their situation doesn't work out quite so well, or when it doesn't work out at all.
If the purpose of the institution, and hence the debt, is to create good functioning society members while educating them towards a field, maybe someone other than the student should share some responsibility for delivering good functioning society members. I wouldn't pay someone to build me a house they knew I'd love in 4 years time unless I was pretty confident they'd be able to deliver. If I told someone out of high school that if they didn't get someone like me to build them a future house they'd be homeless, I'd be exploiting naive youth. I'm offered warranties for lots of products, it'd be great if they were offered for college degrees.
If the purpose is to provide an arena for early adulthood fine, be that. Maybe we need it. I'd still argue that early adulthood is going to be it's own arena for everyone regardless of the institutions or customs in place.