I just paid mine off about a month after my 44th b-day. The math is insane.
I borrowed about 20k to go to UTk as an out of state student - all of it incurred between 1997 and 2000. Now, I did some stupid stuff as I took more than I needed and blew some of it on a kegger and a car stereo and just did stupid things that happen when you hand 19/20 yr olds what seems like to them to be unlimited funds. I dropped from UTk in around 2001. So, I stopped borrowing at that point.
I transferred to MT in 2003, and graduated in 2005. I never had to take a loan to go to MT. I got a pell grant, and the MT 'ship office worked hard to find scholarship opportunities (some big, some even just a couple of hundred - all of which I am grateful for, service I never got at UTk), and I worked at the Roadway in Antioch and basically footed the bill myself.
But from 2000 to 2006, I couldn't make a payment on that 20k. And from about 2007 to about 2012, I couldn't make anything but the minimum. By the time I was about to really start paying them down, with compounded interest and deferments - the totals ballooned to around 38k. It almost doubled.
I get it - I signed my name, I took out the loan, no one put a gun to my head, so I paid it back.
But I can't help but feel this whole system is rigged by academia, corporate loan companies, and the government (guess who's here to solve the "student loan crises!" - just vote for X, it'll be "FREE"!) to just grind every last cent possible out of people who may not be in the position to be making the best long term decisions. I won't call it predatory, but it's darn close.
When I see some "new" academic program that is mostly just corporate gobbledygook, the cynic in me gets a little bit bigger.