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You conveniently forgot to include all the LOST wages from not working while in school. And...interest.

I didn't "conveniently" (whatever that's meant to imply) forget anything. I stated exactly how I was limiting the calculation. Someone who is going to dental school would not have lost much wages unless he or she had been a relatively high earner before dental school. In many cases the entire cost of the loan can be forgiven in less than five years by working for either the U.S. military or in one or another geographical area deemed to be in need of the services the new dentist has become trained to supply. Someone who doesn't arrange for such a loan is being rather short-sighted or calculates that his income over those years minus the costs of loan repay is going to be the same or more than participating in such a tuition program (which includes tuition, books, fees, medical insurance, and an adequate stipend to pay for food, rent, and other incidentals). The costs of my Ph.D. program were erased by my 4 years work in my post-doc fellowship of neurobiology.