Comment by somenameforme

Those numbers are wrong. Here [1] are the latest data from the government. The average debt is $40k across all borrowers for Federal loans. Federal loans are about 90% of all loans, so you can easily bump that up to $45-$50k after also factoring in private loans. And most of that lending is done at predatory rates, even from the government, with the average well above 6% for undergraduate loans, and significantly higher for loans beyond that. So you're looking at $45k debt with compounding interest at 6%+ rates in the average case. And the average case is obviously not people going to higher end and more desirable institutions, where the degree is going to be much more valuable, but the debt is going to be much higher.

The reason debt is low at the most elite institutions is in part because the student body comes from disproportionately wealthy families and in part because most/all of these schools offer tuition free learning and other non-loan assistance for students from "low-income" families. At MIT "low-income" is defined as less than $200k. Any student who's viably able to be accepted to such institutions would be well aware of such things, but 99% aren't - so it's largely just as irrelevant as their debt figures.

[1] - https://studentaid.gov/sites/default/files/fsawg/datacenter/...