Are (presumably American?) student loans deferrable? I recall with my UK loans it was possible to defer repayment if some conditions were met (low income I think was one of them).
I suspect American student loans aren't (more or less) de-facto interest free. Interest on UK student loans supposedly only tracks inflation, although that doesn't seem to be quite true in practice. Nevertheless, interest is low enough that you can actually benefit from arbitrage if instead of paying back the loan you invest in high-interest savings. (except there's no such thing as a high-interest savings account right now) We did this for my girlfriend's student loan for a while, but we're just going to pay as much of it back as possible before interest goes up to >4% in September. No arbitrage possible at that rate, not in this economic climate.
The other aspect is that UK student loans are probably much smaller for the majority of people.
