But do not disregard the other advantages you may have to help you pay off that debt in 3 years: being married so you can share costs access to well paying jobs presumably direct or indirect family support (e.g. being able to live with family cheaply so your income can be directed to debt payments)

We have told people, particularly people with low income or disadvantaged backgrounds, that college is the ticket to a high paying job. And then for-profit and other sketchy institutions prey on these people to get them to take out loans for ow value degrees. That probably aren't even completed.

The chapter in "Weapons of Math Destruction" on how for-profit colleges use "big data" to prey on low income people is terrifying. They look for people getting government assistance and other indicators of "struggle" and use facebook retargeting to bombard them with ads on why they need to go to college at a for profit institution.

You kind a have to luck out on a lot of parameters to easily pay off student loan debt. Even Barack Obama couldn't pay off his student loan debt until recently.