Second, as with anything it is more complex than you are making it. For example, I've known people who have:
- Had a variable interest go up with little to no notice and no adjustment to the payments so if you're not paying attention month to month you end up underpaying.
- Been put in deferment without notice (so their payments stopped) and without requesting it, but continued to accumulate interest.
- Interest is sometimes compounding while in deferment or paying less than interest.
- Were mislead about how interest accumulated while they were still in school (i.e. lead to believe there was no interest when in reality there was just "no payments")
And in that last one in particular, the person I know in that situation (happened to be married to her now), it was her boomer parents that signed the loan paperwork and they didn't even give her access until after she graduated when she found out interest compounding that whole time.
I think the whole debate is putting too much on 17 kids and not enough on their parents who need to co-sign these documents. When I was that age the school didn't tell me how interest worked, my parents did.