I also felt that way for many years, that because I signed on the dotted line, I was obligated to pay everything back. I wanted to be a person of my word.

However, at age 18, I had no understanding of what it would mean to still be paying for college 30 years later. I didn’t understand how a good portion of my tuition, was funding medical research that made the university and its Board and administration extremely wealthy. I didn’t realize how much of my tuition propped up the university’s sports programs - again a huge money maker.

All the while, I worked three jobs in college to live in a shitty one bedroom apartment with drug dealers downstairs, because that’s all I could afford (or I would t have taken loans).

Recently, I’ve been considering letting my loan default, in protest. I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars off for decades, to learn that was just the interest. I still have the entire principle to go, which means about the time I qualify for social security, I will have paid off my education. And I went to a public university, the private college system is even worse.

Maybe a lot of people not paying in protest will be a wake up call?