As for the author, I do question why he got a bank loan rather than a federal loan.
Because you can actually default on a bank loan. You can't default on a federal student loan. Well, you technically can, but it does nothing. They're allowed to garnish wages and other nasty stuff, so there's basically no getting away from it, barring extreme circumstances or leaving the country. The difference between federal student loans and a mafia loan shark is that one of them is legal.
It's a lack of money. The class sizes are too large and they mix the special ed kids in with the other students so that they are constantly getting interrupted while an undertrained teach tries their best. Meanwhile the parents are broke so the kids game tons of problems at home.
I love the way everyone in America tries their best to ignore the disadvantages of poverty and the privilege that comes with money
The problem is that while I'm sure there are plenty of legitimately disadvantaged people who are trying their best to get an education but can't due to underfunded or incompetent schools, there are also people that just don't try in school. Whether it's plain immaturity, a "doing well in school is for " attitude, bad parenting, or something else entirely, the number of people that simply aren't there to be successful is astounding.
Even though there is a soft correlation between being richer and trying harder in school, a poor person who actually tries in school can easily outperform a rich person that doesn't.
Where there's a will, there's a relative.