Is there any other decision with such long lasting consequences? Having children as a teenager, but I can't think of anything else.

We don't give large loans to teenagers for any other reason.

Meanwhile teachers, parents, older students, friends and so on say "follow your heart" and it will all work out.

> Is there any other decision with such long lasting consequences?

As a young adult? Let's see...

Drinking and driving, unprotected premarital sex, drug use and abuse...there are plenty. These are all decisions that a 17 or 18 year old has to make very regularly and the wrong decision can be very harmful.

To your point though, the decision around this massive student loan racket is the only one I can think of that was / is actively encouraged by so many parents and educators. Like I said, there's plenty of blame to go around. But that doesn't absolve the 17 or 18 year old of blame.

Except with all those examples you gave, there are almost not parents that would encourage their child to do that. They would be cautioned over years not to do so. With college that's not the case at all. It is purely happenstance that I don't have loans from school. I knew college was expensive, but the extent of the expense, was not clear to me at all surrounded by a family who had never gone to college. I avoided loans because an in state school happen to be good enough for my teenage dreams and my state had a series of grants for poor and intelligent students. It could have gone very differently though and no one would have told me it was a bad idea.