In the US, 8% is about right for a graduate/professional loan by the federal government[1]. I'm not sure about private/bank loans.

10% interest on a credit card would be pretty low for the US, AFAICT. Most first-time cards come with 23-24% interest, at least when I started searching for one.

[1]: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/announcements/interest-ra...

It's true. I may have actually been higher for some loans until I got a couple of promotions and had enough of an income increase to be able to refinance to a 5 year 4.75% loan at SoFi. Which itself still feels high as you watch DAILY interest compounding happen.

I lean fairly liberal, but I think we can make significant strides with this issue in the US by simply changing what max interest rates are and how this interest compounds. The way things work right now truly feels like robbery when you're in the thick of it.

In the Netherlands, interest rates on student loans are currently 0% (they're tied to the 5 year bond interest rates), and there was a huge outcry when they planned to tie it to the 10 year interest rates instead...

Just checked my direct federal loans (the first source of loan funding for most US college students -- the second is private banks). Interest rate is 4.41%. I was lucky because federal direct loans covered my tuition, but many other students need to take private loans, as well.

In the us, credit card interest is around 25% or more.

For comparison, in Sweden the government student loan interest rate is currently 0.16%. Compare to the central bank rate of -0.25% (yes, negative).

So an equivalent U.S. interest rate (using the fed rate and the same spread) would be around 3%.

Average credit card APR in the US is a bit different. https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/rate-report.php

It's extortionate, given that they're not dischargable in bankruptcy. There's no good reason for the student loan rate to be more than 1% above the mortgage rate.