[brudgers]

The beauty of student loans (from a bank's perspective) is that they are hard for the loanee to discharge and (these days) carry rates well above market with very little risk.

Maybe you can get lucky and out invest financial institutions. But it will be almost certainly be both lucky and unlikely.

The typical way debtors win is via inflation which allows old expensive dollars to be paid down with inflated dollars. Since US monetary policy has kept inflation low (actually just wage inflation) for decades, don't bet on this happening either.

During adulthood ten years turns out not to be that long after all.