Getting at the “how” in “somehow” is tricky. She and her mom signed the loans, but I don’t think they deserve all of the blame. Citibank started lending Ms. Munna money while she was still a teenager, without any sense of her income prospects. And financial aid officers at N.Y.U. had a view of the big picture and the growing debt, or at least they should have. Shouldn’t someone there have talked beforehand to Ms. Munna and her mother about the implications of borrowing so much?

While a package of proposed new student-aid regulations was released Tuesday, a department official said no decision had been reached about what debt-to-income ratio would make for-profit programs ineligible for federal aid.