&gt; And why should anybody care at all about this disgusting and lowly category?<p>Because that &quot;disgusting and lowly category&quot; is the dominant demographic of users; get off your high horse.<p>&gt; Student loans are quite a peculiar form of a debt. They can be largely ignored quite for a while (or ignored at all).<p>Student loan debt is some of the hardest to escape debt in the world, and if you don&#x27;t get a solid job when you get out of college you can be absolutely crippled by it.<p>&gt; In most of the areas this is not true.<p>In software development this is not true, but that&#x27;s about it. In pretty much every basic job they expect to see a college degree or you&#x27;re not getting a callback.<p>Your physician example is also a poor one, as most of what is learned in pre-med has nothing to do with practicing medicine and is just an arbitrary barrier to entry to a professional school.