I think the craziest part is actually that declaring bankruptcy doesn't cancel student loan debt, so there's no failsafe if you don't get a decent job afterwards.
And that the penalty for defaulting is even more money owed. Pay the loans, pay interest for most of your life on an education that frequently doesn't pay commensurately to a job in the field, assuming you can get one. Don't pay, eventually owe hundreds of thousands of dollars more than you did originally.
If you have federal loans, you can use income-based repayment, where you pay a tolerable fraction of your pay and the loan is forgiven after 25 years. If you have private loans, you're pretty well screwed for life.