The student debt crisis is less about the cost of college and more about the failure to graduate. The vast majority of a degree's economic benefit is realized only upon completion. Attending college without graduating is a poor investment, making completion rates a more critical focus for policy than enrollment.

Young people feel a sense of betrayal after following the prescribed path—good grades, college—only to graduate with immense debt into a job market with few opportunities and an unaffordable housing market. This broken promise fuels their economic anxiety.

Young people face a dual crisis: economic hardship and a psychological barrage from social media's curated success. This creates a "shame economy," where constant notifications of others' fake wealth intensify feelings of failure, loneliness, and anxiety more than any other societal factor.

Periods of being broke force your deep-seated, often negative, beliefs about money to the surface. These "stories" were always present but become audible when financial security is gone, offering a chance to rewrite them. You can't change what you're not aware of.

A surge in student loan delinquency rates to double-digit levels indicates significant financial distress, particularly for the middle third of the income distribution. These borrowers are forced to prioritize essential expenses like housing over their loan payments, revealing a deepening affordability crisis.

In post-religious, capitalist societies, work is the primary source of identity and honor. As sociologist Emile Durkheim noted, this means financial failure is no longer just a regrettable setback but an assault on one's core sense of self, leading to profound psychological crises.

When a defining career ends, the biggest struggle is often existential, not financial. Our culture fuses identity with profession ('what you do is who you are'), creating a vacuum when the job is gone. This leads to profound questions of self-worth, value, and purpose that transcend money.

In a truly meritocratic system, failure isn't attributed to bad luck but is seen as a reflection of personal inadequacy. This removes external explanations for struggle, making failure profoundly shameful and psychologically damaging compared to cultures that believe in fate.

When self-worth is tied to constant success (e.g., getting straight A's), failure becomes emotionally devastating. As an adult, this can translate into avoiding risks altogether, because the potential psychological pain of failing outweighs the potential rewards of a bold venture.