The vast majority of kids don't realize what money means. I mean they do in the abstract sense, but they tend to be naively unrealistic about the future. What's $70k of debt per year (paired with compound interest) matter when they'll be a millionaire in a decade or two anyhow?
--Edit--
Interesting, people didn't seem to realize this was true. Here [1] is a study from Gallup on peoples' views on wealth. There is a strong inverse correlation between the number of people that expect to become "rich" and age. For ages 18-29 it's 51%. That decreases down to 8% by the time people are 65, which is still unrealistic.
That study is from 2003, yet its results have been replicated with minimal change in other more recent studies as well (though not from Gallup). It's part of the reason that education loans are simultaneously so overtly predatory, but also phenomenally successful (from the point of view of lenders). Young people are completely unrealistic about their chances for success and so the implications of taking on mountains of debt with often poor interest rates, when you're young, is something they cannot accurately assess.
--Edit--
Interesting, people didn't seem to realize this was true. Here [1] is a study from Gallup on peoples' views on wealth. There is a strong inverse correlation between the number of people that expect to become "rich" and age. For ages 18-29 it's 51%. That decreases down to 8% by the time people are 65, which is still unrealistic.
That study is from 2003, yet its results have been replicated with minimal change in other more recent studies as well (though not from Gallup). It's part of the reason that education loans are simultaneously so overtly predatory, but also phenomenally successful (from the point of view of lenders). Young people are completely unrealistic about their chances for success and so the implications of taking on mountains of debt with often poor interest rates, when you're young, is something they cannot accurately assess.
[1] - http://news.gallup.com/poll/7981/Half-Young-People-Expect-St...