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I'm all for making college less expensive for students but, as good as this sounds, I think we need to enact some controls on the price of school before measures like this will be helpful. If credit becomes cheaper for borrowers, universities will just raise their prices. The economics are in the universities' favor here and they'd happily absorb more money to grow their administration.
It seems like getting some controls in place might be doable if democrats were to push for the. Republicans might be game to regulate the cost of university attendance since it would reduce the flow of money to the evil leftist universities, but maybe they'd see that as anti-capitalist?
The core problem is one you've narrowed in on: There's a positive feedback loop between schools and lenders to increase costs forever.
Student loan debt is (almost) impossible to discharge in bankruptcy. That shit will follow the student for the rest of their life, until it's paid off or the student dies. This is accomplished by allowing private lenders to make "federally-backed" loans, in which there is a quasi-private lender who is, by statute, able to collect interest on the loan, but has almost no risk because, should the student fail to pay, the federal government steps in, pays off the lender, and assumes the debt, at which point, the student still has to pay, but the lender got their money back, plus whatever interest the student had paid until that point.
I mean, if you were in the student loan business, why wouldn't you lend as much as possible? It's literally free, guaranteed revenue for decades. You'd be stupid not to enter this almost zero-risk business.
Meanwhile, while lenders want to lend as much as possible, they can't hand out insane loans for education if education costs little. Schools notice that students have no problem paying large sums of money, so.. they increase tuition, books, add fees, and suddenly, schools are bumping up against what students' would be able to borrow, so those lenders are more than happy to accept more risk-free revenue in the future in exchange for a pittance now, and suddenly, we have a feedback loop that spirals ever-upwards.
The absolutely quickest way to solve the problem is unwind the various bankrupcy laws that makde student loans essentially bankruptcy-proof. Lenders should have to do things like credit-worthiness checks on students.
The best way is to simply provide a free college education for every student that wants one, just like we do a high school education. The entire idea that you should have to assume a crapton of debt just to learn something is insane. The "student loan industry" shouldn't exist.
You've hit the nail on the head. The government has set up a perfect storm of crippling student loans. I'm with you up until the free education part, but I see where you're coming from.
The reason we got into this mess is because previously, you needed some form of wealth to attend college. The government didn't like the class divide, and backed federal loans so that anyone could get a loan. Then to address the concern of a student, with no assets, just immediately declaring bankruptcy after his degree, they made it impossible.
Free education would address this, but I'm not so sure that would do more than just adjust the problem. We have free education up through high school, and generally poor neighborhoods have shit education and can't afford private or to move. I don't see how that problem doesn't just expand to colleges.
We already have an issue getting good quality teachers and paying them, that problem will only explode when we take on professor salaries.
I'm a conservative libertarian, so I'd rather see the government get their hands out of it all, or let the local governments deal with it. I know that's not ideal, but I'd rather see the problems reset and then look for solutions. We have such a large stack of band aids right now, its tough to say what will happen when we start removing them, or adding different ones.