[chadzawistowski]

Not really.

Shamelessly copying a comment by /u/MasterCookSwag on reddit:

THIS is the major piece everyone misses. Mortgages were such a disaster because banks held the debt securities thinking they were safe assets and they weren't. This caused a chain reaction of devaluation of balance sheet assets and paper losses which resulted in the collapse of some major institutions. It then caused credit to dry up so businesses couldn't borrow and a crisis of confidence in the fundamentals of the economy.

Student debt won't do any of these things because the underlying structure is not even remotely similar. What student debt will do is represent a long term suck on the taxpayer both directly(through payments) and indirectly(through defaults). This will result in a drag on GDP. There is no way to short this and there won't be a collapse. That doesn't make it not a bad thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cj937/e...

[thegasman]

This isn't a strong argument to me. Student debt might not be collateralized the same way mortgages are (i.e. there's no house to repossess), but student debt is still an asset on a bank's book. If anything, student debt default seems to me more troublesome, as defaulted debt without collateral is more damaging to a balance sheet than debt with collateral.

[nkurz]

I think you are missing that the many (most?) student loans in the US are either made by the government (post-2010 direct loans) or are guaranteed by the government (pre-2010 guaranteed loans):

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/types-federal-student...

If the student defaults on a direct loan, the government is the one not being paid. If the student defaults on a guaranteed loan, the government pays the loan holder. Everyone wins! Except the for the credit blemished student and the US taxpayer, that is.