In the US, student loan interest rates and average amount of debt are generally much higher than other countries. And you your student debt is designed to be permanent so that even declaring bankruptcy doesn't discharge it.

Its essentially just a tax you pay for using higher education. You pay that in other countries as well via your taxes. Your tax debt is also permanent so you can't get out of paying taxes just by declaring bankruptcy.

It is a bit weird that they let universities levy indirect taxes but its not really bad. Imagine if instead of property tax you have government property loans and the interest of those loans was instead of property tax, I think that wouldn't be a bad system.