I don't think student loans should be done away with...they have allowed people to get higher education who in years past wouldn't have been able to. For example, one of my grandfathers was super smart but never got to go to college because he came from a poor family and had to start working in a factory right out of high school. The other one didn't graduate from college b/c he had a football scholarship and then his college went belly up during the great depression. However....
I don't have any doubt that the unfettered access to almost unlimited amounts of student loans has driven up college tuition, though, as well as grad and professional school tuition. One thing that would help is if student start looking at value (i.e. whether it's worth it to pay for a particular degree at a particular school). I'm not downing private schools b/c I think my private undergrad school was worth every penny of the 14k tuition (I only paid 7k/year due to having scholarships). I don't think my private med school was worth the 33k tuition, nor do I think it was any better of an education than a state school with 15-20k tuition/year. The problem is that when students and parents make these decisions about where to go to school, they often don't know, and don't have enough information and experience to know, whether the money they are spending is well spent. Most all docs will eventually dig themselves out of debt and be comfortable financially (hard to find a 40-something doc not doing well financially, not that there aren't a few out there...). I think in the end the 133k I borrowed for med school was well spent, but if it was 250k instead for JUST med school, then I don't know....if you go into radiology you are OK, but maybe not if you go into peds.
