In most middle-class households today, it’s education or bust. A degree, we’ve decided, is worth all sorts of pain. Parents pay more for their kids’ college than for their own homes, and 20-somethings enter the real world six digits deep in debt.
Does this make sense? Sometimes, the alarming answer is no. In Newsweek, Megan McArdle explains how America’s obsession with college has turned higher education into a national neurosis, saddling students with a backpack full of loans. Here, college grads talk about their debt.