The range is quite wide though. Someone attending a state university or community college with grants and/or scholarships might have zero debt, and someone attending a private school through post-grad with no financial aid might incur $250,000 in debt.
Ending up with $100k+ loans is more common when people go onto professional schools (masters, law, medicine, etc), fields that should have higher earning power. Not everyone finishes, and for law not everyone that finishes gets a high paying job.
Over half of all student loan debt is held by those with advanced degrees (https://wcer.wisc.edu/docs/working-papers/Working_Paper_No_2...). Add in that only 13% of Americans 25+ have advanced degrees, compared to 35% with at least bachelors degrees.
Student loan debt is disproportionally a problem with advanced degrees, but it all gets lumped together when we talk about student loans.
A Bachelor of Science might cost $20,000 NZD ($13,000 USD), extra fees are pretty low, textbooks are not cheap but professors usually try to avoid you having to buy them. In your first year you might get away without having to buy a textbook (in the maths departments at least). A Bachelor of Arts would could a few thousand less.
Fully catered accommodation is expensive. Higher end would be $14,000 NZD ($9,200) for a year. Not many students continue in halls of residence past the first year. Staying in a shared flat would cost a LOT less.
A lot of students also live with parents and commute.
The Student Loan is interest free and covers course costs as well as a portion of living costs. Domestic students also can get a Student Allowance of about $220 NZD/week (or more depending on circumstances). The allowance is welfare, not a loan.
Walking away with a degree and $30,000 - $40,000 NZD ($20,000 USD - $26,000 USD) interest free debt is reasonable. Some people will be more, others will be less because they worked part time while studying.
Repayments are taken out of your paycheck (12% of income over $19,670 NZD, so probably 8-11% of total grad compensation per year). There is no incentive to repay it faster due to the lack of interest. Most students I think would have it paid back in 11 years or less. If you learn less than $19,670, you don't have to make any payments.
The catch is you pay 4% interest if you go work overseas. Salaries are higher overseas so you will still win.
There is little to no incentive to declare bankruptcy. I have never even heard of it discussed.
* https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/state-of-student...
In NZ the median student debt at end of study is just $17,000 NZD but that includes people dropping out after one year, non-university diploma courses and students whose parents paid for most of it or students who worked while studying and paid as they went.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/impact-student-loan-debt
https://ticas.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/classof2018.pdf
I always have a hard time understanding these stories of American kids racking up 100s of thousands in debts. Just doesn't seem like a workable system.
Interesting to learn that the average is far lower than the sensationalism makes it out to be.
I wonder if this is just a very American thing because the loans are so ridiculously big? In NZ student loans can be forgiven through bankruptcy. See http://www.studentloan.org.nz/options.html
But the loan is only around like $30k anyway and I basically never hear of anyone purposely declaring bankruptcy to get out of it. The whole thing is pretty much a non-issue. People take them out, people pay them back. Some people used to go overseas in order to avoid paying it back but they changed the law, so that you can't do that anymore.