But here is the part Lee Siegel misses. I started making $45,000.00 a year out of law school. But my income has gone up ever since. My student loans payments have become less and less of a burden. And when they were a true burden, I was easily able to stop paying for a time or work to reduce my payment. Sure, I’ll be paying on them longer now, but I was able to get to a point where I could pay them more easily.

Certainly I had to make some decisions I wish I did not have to make. Certainly there are things I could not do because money had to go to pay back student loans. But I entered into the obligation.

The best things in life are not free. That includes education. Lee Siegel could have met his obligations. He could do so now. He did not chose life. He chose, essentially, to steal and now to brag about it. Not only that, he chose Columbia. He could have gone somewhere else as millions of other American do because of cost.