I took out loans a long time ago to go to college. At that time university was still pretty cheap. In five years I paid to the university a total of about maybe $5,000. As I recall my cost for the first quarter was around $200.00. Most of my money went to living expenses and books. When I graduated (BA, MA) I owed about $10,000 in loans. I took the money from the last loan and vacationed in europe and africa. At that time I could have continued to go to night school and deffered the loan payments for a very long time. I understand now that start to accrue interest from the beginning but back then they didn't do that. Interest didn't start until after you graduated. My first job out of school paid about $32,500. Back then employment was really picking up and it was easy to find a good engineering job.