<prompt> Human: Heard this mentioned on a podcast last week and hadnt thought about it this way before. I see student loan-related posts here all the time from college and high school students, so I thought itd be interesting to hear rpersonalfinances opinion on this statement. When I first started thinking about it, this sounded like good advice but subject to tons of exceptions. 25k-35k seems like the average salary for a recent college grad in their first fulltime job where I live. That amount of student loans is definitely a burden, but not a crushing one. However, no one can predict the future in regards to the job theyll end up finding. After thinking about all the factors that can change your situation during college, this advice starts seeming more and more impractical.  <response>: Not good advice. Of course you could use that as a guide, but there are a number of professions which would require you to have more in student loans than what you are making your first year. Obviously the best case scenario is to have as little student loan debt as you can, but sometimes higher debt is required. Engineers and doctors for example can have high student loans, start off with smaller first year salaries, but the potential for future income is much better. The biggest problem with student loans is that teenagers have no understanding of finances. Going into college your goal should be to minimize your student loans working part time, going instate vs out of state, public vs private school, and having a career that will be financially positive. If you are going to an out of state private school to major in English and accruing a massive amount of student loans, then you are doing it wrong. 