I think everyone here could have reached that conclusion without a study.
I will go you one more honest and succinct.
Student debt should be fully dischargable under bankruptcy laws.
That would be a direct approach which would shrink the college economic enterprise. Interestingly, they have already done that in pursuing the many "for profit" colleges that over-promise the value of their training and degrees, usually causing their students to run up huge debts.
But, they have only encouraged non-STEM "studies" majors in accredited colleges to entrap unwitting (and dim witted) students who become long term debt slaves.
I could have done this study from my each chair in our family room with my Chromebook and Google
Then, with my personal observations of 2-3 decades of watching idiots getting Instant Unemployment Degrees after wasting 5-7 years getting a worthless degree in the so called liberal arts.
In the meantime these idiots maxed out their student loans for spring breaks and trips to Europe!
So you have faux intellectuals with at least a $100k in student loans and no viable jobs to pay back those loans.
Many in their so called senior years were sent “free” credit cards charging double digit monthly interest rates to really take these people down the debt laden path.
Thanks to the collegiate-corporate-HR meritocracy racket. virtually every job worth working today requires a degree of some kind, even low level dead end menial jobs.
I can’t go back to jobs that I worked 10 years ago due to the ridiculous requirements dictated by HR departments.
Waaaaaay too many people attending college nowadays and as a result, the education one actually receives has become watered down.
As I understand it, when Student Loan payments are made, the money does not reduce the account balance held by the Fed. Rather, the money is spent by Congress “off the books”. This is a scam.
This entire smoke and mirrors BS job that they do with this subject. the average debt carried by a student loan is 28,000 - about the cost of new car, which most of the kids probably have. The most likely segment of student debt holder that default on their loan are the ones who didn’t finish. They hold the attitude that, “hey, I didn’t finish, so I don’t have to pay”.