You can stop thinking about all the auxiliary stuff you mentioned, and just compare, for example, the ratio of tuition : minimum wage from your college education and a contemporary one.
That's what the students of the day are doing. Education is so expensive so I might as well live great while doing it. An extra $10K or $15K a year in living expenses on my loan is no big deal, right? That adds up when you need to start making payments on a loan that is ~$40K higher than it could have been.
Where are you getting this data? And FWIW it’s not unreasonable to pay 10-15k for shitty housing annually if you study in a city. What do you expect them to do? Go back in time and buy a nice home for 60k?
Would you rather we don't have these numbers help us with decision making? Do you have a better system in mind? Should we just never discuss or think about risk/reward trade-offs as soon as it involves a single life at risk?
I also don't get where the Wikipedia snark is coming from. I know that Wikipedia pages are not perfect but It's still a pretty good reference for a lot of things. I often trust Wikipedia articles for any given subject as long as it is well-sourced and not political just like this one.
