This seemed just like common sense... if you're going to borrow money, will you have the means to pay it back? These conversations need to be had.
People should have and understand a plan for repaying a loan. Of course, the hard question is how can we make this happen?
Environment is everything.
Today's rate for the lower tier 1 private university I attended would be:
Bachelor's: $74,180 per year x 4 = $296,720
Master's: $50,787 per year x 2 = $101,574
Total: $398,274
This is in one of the poorest large cities in the US, so that is WAY out of reach for local residents (without substantial financial aid, which is why I attended).
Tuition goes up every year, so it would actually cost more than this. It's been two decades since I enrolled, and the cost per credit hour has gone from about $900 to $2186 in that time.
For undergraduate that includes room, board, books, fees and tuition. For graduate it's just tuition and fees.
For anything else, there are student loans. Easy to get, hard to get rid of. They have higher interest rates than mortgages, and people take similarly long periods of time to pay them off.
I know people who still owe tens of thousands on their undergraduate loans, decades after graduation. They work, they make payments, but they may never pay them off.