Technology

the impact that being thrown out can have if you’ve got $50k in student loan debt.

In today's world, that puts you in good company of other student loan sufferers who aren't actually deadbeats, but instead victims of an economic pincer movement between rising tuition costs and falling employment opportunities.

During the 4 years I was in undergraduate, my University doubled tuition, the last year literally cost twice as much as the first one. They "managed" the situation by giving lots of scholarships which made the impact negligible to current students, but those quickly faded away. We as the student body literally marched and protested against it - this was the very beginning of the US federally backed student loan program and universities all over the country were ramping up tuition levels to take advantage of the "extra funding" that was becoming available to new high school graduates through that program. It was an obvious blatant cash grab putting our generation in debt for the very same education that our predecessors got for less than half the cost. Various "peace dividends" of the collapse of the USSR masked the problem until the collapse of .com as you note.

War Games with Matthew Broderick summed it up: the only way to win is not to play. https://rmst202.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2022/04/illich_deschooling-society.pdf