It's not the math that people have a difficulty with. It is the impact. I was a double major in CS + Econ with Math minor. I took out student loans and I knew the interest rates. I knew exactly how much my monthly payments would be. The problem is that the number meant nothing to me as a student.

I had no idea if $100/mo for 10 years is a lot or very little to pay for student loans because I had no job, no car payments, no mortgage, no healthcare costs, no hobbies, and no personal obligations. But I did have some side income and I could easily make $1000/mo making websites if I needed to. So I signed up. Would I have signed up if it was $2000/mo? No. But had my payments been $600/mo instead of $100/mo, I would have gone bankrupt because my starting salary after college was pretty low.

Just like a small percentage of people who abuse welfare, Medicare, and other social programs, a small number of students abuse the student loans by spending them on luxury goods. But most of the students take out loans because they have no alternative and regardless of the interest rate, social/family/economic pressure discourages them from choosing any other path.

And in this particular instance, the economy was pretty good 2000-2008. So the students who took out $80k loans for an Art degree from the Ringling School of Arts in 2006 did not think they would be stocking shelves in 2010. Ringling Graduates from the past two decades had done pretty well for themselves, finding work in Disney, ILM, and many other creative agencies around the country. Now nobody thinks twice before telling them "Well you should've thought twice before signing up for a useless art degree instead of something useful like STEM"