These things became "OK" starting in ancient antiquity, which is why advocacy for debt jubilees are found in historic texts like the Code of Hammurabi, Bible, etc. - many cultures have dealt with the slave <-> slaver relationship of debt in much the same way; such as the United States during the debt moratorium in the US Panic of 1819 and the gold clauses nullification during the Great Depression.
Doing what the older generation would have done is not possible for all graduates today. The "older generation" would have gone to school for free or paid off their tuition working one summer at an ice cream parlor, while some today that made bad ROI choices when they were 17-18 year old have functionally signed over a large percentage of their income for the rest of their working lives for an education or partial education that may be a net-negative outcome for them.
That being said, claiming bankruptcy on student debt in the US is almost impossible like Nick said unless you become a completely disabled near-vegetable. If you have the ability to work in any capacity, the banks want their money no ifs, ands, or buts.
Starting with the Great Recession the US and many western cultures have dealt with debt in a very different way that is relatively new compared to the last 20-30 centuries of human history - they have decided to bail out the creditors to the tune of trillions of dollars of 0% loans, asset repurchases, and publicly insuring risky business activities with tax money, while simultaneously expecting the debtor class to suck it up, give back their houses and pay student loans which may now be the single largest purchase of many people's lives, vs. that "older generations" purchase of economically productive assets like homes and automobiles that boosted the economy rather than drag it down.
Student loans were a bankers solution to the problem of creating a highly educated society based on intellectual rather than manufacturing output while simultaneously cutting public funding for higher education. This introduced massive inefficiencies that caused debt levels to spiral out of control. The aforementioned debt-repayment, partial forgiveness, and public service benefits are a banker's band-aid fix to the economic fallout from this partial privatization of education funding, without which the "bubble would pop" , and demand for higher education would have likely plummeted. This is not a problem in the "not enough educated workers" arena, but rather a "smaller supply of educated workers" problem - which means wage appreciation - which is public enemy number one in the board room.
While I can understand the allure of the Holier than Thou attitude toward your fellow citizen's that are worse off than you are, you have to understand the economic repercussions of making such mind-numbingly poor social policy decisions. If you saddle a large percentage of young workers with insurmountable debt loads, you will reduce the economic demand for items and services that keep you employed at your jobs, reduce investment in public companies that fund your pensions, and reduce the income potential of the new working class that is supposed to foot the bill for your Social Security Insurance programs. Meanwhile, bank investors and bond-holders (both corporate and federal) will benefit from these very economically unproductive interest payments that could have been far better utilized keeping the economy you all depend on functioning with spending.
It's not rocket science, but it's also not a very well understood issue in the general population. We live in a consumer economy, like it or not - and the debtor/working class are the largest "demand engine" we have. If we pursue economics that drastically reduce that demand, our little game of musical chairs is not going to end well for anyone depending on the continued functioning of that consumer system, especially those who are in debt or collecting retirement benefits under that system.
The post-depression US public education system, for all its many faults, became the model for almost the entire western world, and it's one of the main reasons we leap-frogged other countries in productive output in the past century. Education is well understood to be the single largest bonus for economic productivity, and if you put that education system at risk you are gambling with a lot more than students learning the life lesson of pay what the bank says you owe no matter what.
If anyone even read that whole post, they deserve a cookie at the very least!
