Retired banker here...daughter soon to enter Ortho residency, and her S.O. is already a Neurosurgery resident...hence my interest in this particular topic. Also teach Personal Financial Planning and Investment Management at the college level.
The conventional wisdom is that when you have an income well into the 6 figures you "need" a generous mortgage. A key reason is that the guvment (federal and state, and perhaps more local) effectively subsidizes your mortgage due to the mortgage interest deduction. The Left REALLY badly wants to do away with this primary tax deduction of the upper middle class, but it will be hard to accomplish politically. The Obamanators (European socialists) REALLY want to kill the mortgage interest deduction.
In contrast, student debt is NOT tax deductible. Ergo, it makes sense to pay it off sooner rather than later and retain mortgage debt instead.
The housing crash starting in 2008 (really caused by the Left insisting on CRA-ilk $ BILLIONS of mortgages being granted to those not creditworthy) changed the conventional wisdom a bit. We had gone 70 years from 1938 until 2008 with home values generally rising, but the Left managed to ruin the primary way that most households accumulate retirement net worth.
The stock market was ALSO torpedoed by this PC lunacy as the investment banks were hammered due to MBS's (mortgage backed securities).
An aside...the guvment MADE $ (about $16 BILLION per the guvment itself) on the so-called "bank bailouts"-- it ALWAYS does make $ on bank bailouts...the banks pay the loans back as the economy recovers, whereas bailing out the labor unions (UAW) was a dead loss because it defied economic logic.
Many time what the masses imagine to be true (especially when trumped up by the PC Left) is simply fallacious.