Yeah, generally when people talk about student loan debt being an issue in the US, they’re not talking about people with $30k loans. That would be comparable to a loan on a new automobile and would be affordable to most Americans. Generally, the problem is that many people are ending up with loans in the $100k+ range and often for degrees which don’t confer any kind of special earning power.
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.
