I didn't "suffer", I just fulfilled the obligations I signed up for when I signed up to my loans.
2/ Objectively, what is the likelihood that continuing the status quo crashes the system?
3/ What are the long term consequences from potential solutions? E.g., if current debts are forgiven/cancelled, would lenders refuse to lend for colleges? Would well off people with significant debt take advantage of the system we're protecting, leading to less trust in it, which could cause it's own collapse movement?
The defensible logic is that we don't really know that current student debt will "crash the system", and we definitely don't know what the 2nd and 3rd order consequences would be if any of the solutions were implemented.
2. An economy where a major portion of debtors are unable to discharge their loans (due to the laws presuming student loans as ineligible for discharge), debtors will fall into a cycle of inability to pay debt, inability to qualify for a home, apartment or a vehicle, and potential inability to qualify for a job (credit check) and become increasingly dependent on government programs to stay afloat. This can put a strain on government resources beyond what a simple bankruptcy would do, which is the forced cancellation (discharge) of a debt. Basically, the cost of a bankruptcy (to the economy) is smaller than the cost of an otherwise capable judgment-debtor on welfare/Medicade/SNAP/others.
3. Private student loans, which are effectively no different than unsecured debt, should be presumed dischargeable in bankruptcy. Federal student loans are actually structured quite nicely, except many debtors do not understand the complexities of the multiple forms of loans they carry (perkins, plus, university-managed, subsidized, unsubsidized, private) and rules for one loan type do not necessarily apply to the other.
Colleges would actually benefit from student loan reform, since they could better educate students and parents on standardized loan packages, rather than the large array of loan options available now.
But more directly these people and institutions made a bet, the fact not all bets win is a basic fact of life.
PS: I have negligible student debt at sub inflation interest rates remaining. But, for people with 8+% interest rate loans that interest should very much should be on the table at a minimum.
So of course it's going to crash.
It's like watching a feedback loop in your motor controller, and seeing the numbers start going up, knowing there's too much force in the system to abort it now. It could be an hour before the loud bang comes, but nothing can stop it. If you interrupt it right now, you do less damage right now (still enough to destroy the system of course), but if you let it go, it remains undamaged until it overloads. And you know, you might get really lucky and have the axle melt or something, which avoids the damage. The odds, to put it mildly, don't favor that outcome though.
Technically the better action is to interrupt it, but I've hardly ever seen anyone do that.
For public universities, they were substantially cheaper than private universities due to state subsidies. The tuition has almost doubled over the past 15 years for the few places I checked, but that's only a bit over inflation. Public state universities are still a great deal.
So I think the stats are using a lot of for-profit colleges which skew the numbers up. They are expensive and don't offer a lot. Anyways, I would love to see some actual data and the breakdown of what schools are increasing tuition.
It's about whether rules matter. If people think the rules will be enforced, then we can all make plans based on the rules. If they don't, then all courses of action are on the table. Whatever gets the job done. That's back to rule of the strong.
See: how we treat big banks.
(Not to say we shouldn't have a debt jubilee, but that's what we risk)
See the current trend towards nullifying possession charges for Marijuana. Yes, it sucks for people who got punished under the old rules, and yes, it's not good to say "laws might change and you might 'get away with it'", but sometimes that is better than letting a lot of people suffer.
By all means argue for a solution that also helps people who made sacrifice in the past, but people who didn't or couldn't being left to suffer is not a solution.
To be clear - I get you are not saying you don't want to solve this because of that, but unfortunately that sentiment often results in policy actually being set like that.
We should always be asking 'how can we pull everyone up' not 'are they going through what I did'. Even if it ends up not benefiting you directly, we all benefit from a better society.
If we could get past the initial point and start implementing stuff like that, it'd give people more faith that it doesn't just invalidate their effort.