Yo, just because a new student getting loans right now can get 4% doesn't mean that 7% wasn't absolutely the norm for many people over the past decades. Anyone in their 30s has 6 or 7% or more on their loans, before ZIRP took over.

And since raising rates is the way they're going to stop inflation, like it or not, that 4% is going to end real soon and kids will be back to 5-7% in the next few years.

> Yo, just because a new student getting loans right now can get 4% doesn't mean that 7% wasn't absolutely the norm for many people over the past decades

Subsidized loans were at 6.80% for the first two years they used fixed interest (the academic years 2006-2007 and 2007-2008); this is the highest they have ever been under the fixed interest regime; there are three additional years they were at 5% or higher.

Under the variable interest regime before that, they spent some time at 7% or above in the 1990s, but those would have fallen with general interest rates.