>college is valuable even if we don't get a high income

Absolutely! Any education is valuable in some way. Not all are valuable _economically_, though. A degree in sociology that enables you to work in social services where you can impact peoples' lives for the better is invaluable, though it may not pay enough to pay back tens of thousands of dollars of student loans.

> I've always heard that student loans were justifiable debt

Not always. Borrowing $200K to get a Literal Arts degree (meaning a general degree with no specific specialization) from a private school is probably a bad idea. Borrowing $10K to finish your degree in Accounting is _easier_ to justify financially, since it should be paid off within a year of getting a job.

The problem with a student loan is that it should be used to earn a degree where you can get a job that _pays back_ the loan quickly. Once you have a student loan, there's no collateral to "give back" to satisfy the loan, unlike a mortgage or a car loan, and they cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The only way out is to earn money and pay it back. 

Yes, there are "loan forgiveness" programs out there that pay back your student loans if you work in an under-served field or region, but they usually require 5 to 10 years of work before the loan is paid off. By then, the interest you've paid usually outweighs the amount that is forgiven, and you'd have been better off (financially) getting a job that pays more and paying back the loan yourself, _then_ working in an under-served area if you choose to.

I value a college education _very highly_, but that doesn't mean that borrowing as much as you can to get a degree from a prestigious school is always a good investment.

I personally want my children to avoid student debt like the plague for those reasons. As teenagers, I have already told them that I will only support them if they go to a school that we can afford together (which might mean they get a job to support themselves), pursue a degree that justifies the cost, and don't take any student debt. That may mean going to an in-state public university, but I have personally experienced the pain of paying back student loan debt over several years, and don't want my children to go through that if at all possible.

>is Pete correct that 75K income for a potential degree (career path) is not enough to justify student loan debt?

The number is fairly arbitrary so it depends on what your cost of living is. Making $75K in, say, Alabama, is much different than making $75K in New York City.  It's easier to live on much less than $75K with a lower cost-of-living and use the rest to pay off the student loans as quickly as possible.

>what should students consider about taking on student loan debt before getting a degree

The main _financial_ consideration is: how much do I expect to earn with this degree versus without it? That requires four guesses, though: What kind of job can I get now, how much does it pay, what kind of job can I get with the degree, and how much does _it_ pay. Take that difference and divide it into the amount you'll need to borrow, and that tells you _at least_ how long it will take to pay off the loan (in reality the interest will make it a longer period). Since that analysis has to be done before beginning college, that's a lot of unknowns to gamble a large student debt burden on. I changed degrees three times in college (taking loans along the way), and paid for it later with a larger debt burden than I would have liked.

_Plus_, that assumes that you _don't spend any more of that extra money_. It's _very_ tempting to desire a nicer house, nicer cars, etc. and put the student loans off to the side, which increases the payback period even more.

All that to say that there are way too many unknowns to know for certain whether a student loan can be completely justified. It's better to avoid them as much as possible.