Maybe not. This outlook feels a bit blinded by privilege. If you're lower middle class and didn't get great scholarships, you have to choose between taking out

Maybe not. This outlook feels a bit blinded by privilege. If you're lower middle class and didn't get great scholarships, you have to choose between taking out a lot of debt or going to college and working to keep yourself in it. When you get out, if your grades were lower because you spent time working / it affected your grades, this may affect your chances at a job. Similarly, if you're poor and your high school education didn't prepare you as well as rich kids for college, this can happen. And if you were mislead in re market opportunities (this happens more than you might imagine), you may have chosen a field that happens to be not-very-lucrative / not many jobs are available. Again, this is more likely to happen to disadvantaged / underprivileged kids regardless of how hard working or smart they might be. Now you're in the real world, you have a hard time getting a job, and even though you learned a lot it doesn't feel appreciated or wanted by the market. So you feel that all you got was debt and a diploma, but not necessarily because you didn't take advantage of learning or growing as a person. And now you have no way to pay it off, so you feel trapped and hustled.