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Without student loans, millions of Americans couldn't afford the degrees that might smooth the road to prosperity. Yet, having student loans can also make it tougher to get far along that journey.

People who leave school without loans can have an easier time buying a home, saving for retirement or starting a business, compared with those who have student debt. One aim of President Biden'sstudent-debt relief plan, currentlystalled by legal challenges, is to help borrowers shed debt and progress toward those goals, though critics argue the program is unfair to those who sacrificed to pay for college or pay down their debt.

Research from the Federal Reserve found that, between 2005 and 2014,there was a linkbetween rising student debt and the reduced share of young adults who own a home. Carrying student debt is also associated withbeing less likely to start a small business, according to research from the Philadelphia Fed, and withbeing more likely to delay having children, according to researchers at Ohio State University.

Furthermore, college graduates with student debt have built upan average of about $9,000in retirement assets by age 30half as much as those without student debt, according to a 2018 study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

"Student debt is a new stratification system," saysCharlie Eaton, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced who studies economic disparities in higher education. "It confers a set of advantages at the end of college for people who are debt-free over people with student debt."

Being debt-free isn't itself a guarantee of prosperity, and even with student loans, Prof. Eaton says, "you're probably mostly better off going to college, though that's not true for everyone."

It isn't surprising that those without student debt often hit financial milestones sooner than borrowers do. Notably, these graduates say they also feel more freedom to take personal and professional risks or to pursue passions and alternate paths.

Skyler McKinley, a 30-year-old in Denver, says he wouldn't have been able to accept his first job working for $34,000 a year if he had graduated with debt. That job, deputy director of a state agency in charge of Colorado's then-novel regulations on recreational-marijuana sales, was instrumental in launching his career, he says.