[Crake]

There's a $57,500 lifetime limit on federal student loans for undergraduates. The people you see on the news complaining about their $200,000 english degree debt are people who have rich family who cosigned a bunch of private loans for them. (And who will make the loan payments when the english graduate inevitably can't.)

With federal loans, you can only take out at most $5,500/year as an 18 year old, which doesn't do a lot. Cost of attendance in my home state is $20,000/year, so that's about 25% of what you need to go.

http://studentaid.ed.gov/types/loans/subsidized-unsubsidized...