That's true, but I would bet money that if you were able to take the pulse of Americans collectively you'd find people putting way more weight on their credit scores than is strictly rational. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen it suggested that people do irrational things like carry revolving credit card balance or take out loans they don't really need to "build credit."

Most debt collectors aren't going to do much more than ruin your credit and call you a lot anyway.

Actually, allowing students to discharge their debt would solve this problem as lenders would start means testing students to see if they are credit worthy.

Unless you're looking at their parents pretty much no student is "credit worthy" for a loan into the tens of thousands of dollars in the traditional sense.