CNBC Select has a fascinating story about a 35-year-old woman who spent 9 years paying off her college loan debt of $81,000.

The main takeaway from the story (or so it seems to me) is that kids undertake serious debt to go to college before they understand the meaning of debt. Adults encourage them to do so.

Another takeaway is that Melanie Lockert, the young woman in the story, was serious about her financial obligations.

Lockert wrote a blog called “Dear Debt,” which is also the name of a book she published in 2016. CNBC Select reports:

When Lockert was in her twenties, living in Portland, Oregon, and side hustling almost seven days a week just to get by, she created what she called “a debt-freedom dream list.” On it was everything she would do once she paid off her debt: take her mom to Italy, get pet cats and move back home to Los Angeles.

Lockert’s borrowing for college broke down this way: $81,000 total, which included $23,000 for her undergraduate degree from California State University, Long Beach, and $58,000 for her graduate degree from New York University.

While studying at NYU, Lockert already worked at part-time jobs to help pay back her loans. She taught at a Harlem theater and worked as a receptionist. Because she had been dedicated to repaying her loans, she was stunned when she realized upon graduation from NYU in the spring of 2011 that she still owed a huge debt–$68,000 in principal remaining.  

That is when Lockert had an epiphany:

At this point, Lockert had been making payments every month for the last five years, yet there was still a staggering balance remaining. She soon realized the reason: For all those years she was only paying the minimum.

At this point, Lockert had been making payments every month for the last five years, yet there was still a staggering balance remaining. She soon realized the reason: For all those years she was only paying the minimum.

When I graduated from NYU, I started to do the math and I realized I was paying $11 a day in interest,” she says. “That just really woke me up.”

Unlike credit cards, where you only accrue interest if you carry a balance, student loans accrue interest daily.

…

When I was 17/18, I signed up for student loans not knowing how interest worked,” she says. “I subscribed to the idea that everyone has student loans, that it’s good debt. It wasn’t until I graduated from NYU when I was more broke than before that I realized the only way I was going to get out of debt was by paying more than the minimum. It was such a mind shift.”

Lockert believes that because of interest, she actually paid around $100,000.

But here is the question: Should somebody in her late teens or early twenties, who doesn’t understand interest and the other ramifications of serious debt, be allowed or, indeed encouraged, to take on this kind of debt?

Excessive college loan debt is a symptom if the real problem: sky high college tuition. It is now virtually impossible for somebody like Lockert to work her way through college. Actually, she did work her way through college—it just didn’t make much of a dint in her debt.

Colleges are not more expensive than formerly because they offer better educations. The bloat in tuition is in large part the result of ballooning administrative staff (including those all-important diversity administrators).

Just about the only good news about the COVID-19 shutdown is that it has actually allowed parents to ask for a tuition discount and possibly get it. Colleges are strapped for funds and parents and students can take advantage of this opportunity.

This may be temporary, but at least it gets hold of the right end of the stock: the inflated cost of a college degree. Perhaps it is a welcome first step in creating alternatives to a decade of debt.

Read the Lockert story to learn about the emotional toll of debt. College is supposed to help people get ahead, not held back by debt.