If I bought the Civic at least I could discharge the loan through bankruptcy. You're not allowed to do that with education loans. They're the only kind of debt I'm aware of where this is the case and it's unclear to me why we should treat our children any differently than we expect to be treated with regards to debt.

I think there are a lot of issues with the system, not least of which is that it's possible to accrue that much debt without any credit check. But let's not pretend that the system isn't rigged to saddle people with debt.

22k is an average. There are many people whose debts are significantly more.

Even with 100k in debt you're talking 7k interest. Get a job in sewer maintenance instead of museum curation and you'll have no problem paying that off.