[grandalf]

There are two relevant things to realize about this:

1) Student debt is much different than normal consumer debt in that it is not dischargeable if the holder declares bankruptcy.

2) For years, many politicians have been calling for the massive increases in the issuance of student loans, presenting the issue as though the only hope for many people to obtain education is to take on massive amounts of debt.

If there weren't lots of bankers, politicians, and lobbyists getting rich off of this bubble, it might be possible to believe that they genuinely think that saddling teenagers with massive amounts of non-dischargeable debt was a good thing for society.

Student loans are the biggest handout to the financial services industry in decades, and both parties are reaping the spoils of these deals.

[cinquemb]

Only reason why I think there is much press about this is because it would make sense to me that increasing delinquency/amount of student loans will bleed into mortgage asset valuations and feed a long term bearish (inflation-adjusted) trend[0] (after all, these debts cannot be discharged[1] and negatively affect credit when not serviced, which factors into getting approved for mortgages, even after setting aside how stagnant wages have been for decades on avg), and I'm not too sure how banks would feel that if people are no longer opting to taking out 30year + mortgages that I'm sure compromise a significant part of their "assets".

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASHMA

[1] Well outside of some political student loan debt jubilee that will probably leave a lot of universities holding the bag, not to mention other private entities that have attached themselves to the student loan system.