There is still technically an upper limit to "whatever you want" and that is the lifetime expected value of the education to the student. We recently seem to ha

There is still technically an upper limit to "whatever you want" and that is the lifetime expected value of the education to the student. We recently seem to have started bumping into it as more people ask (publicly) "is it worth it at all?". The direct consequence of the government guaranteeing the loan and making it undischargeable for life is to transfer the expected monetary value of the education away from the students and to the operators of colleges with a nice cut diverted to bankers along the way. The students are reduced to being sharecroppers of their own minds, spending a lifetime working the education that someone else owns.