Yes. Loans should be harder to get. This will reduce school costs, reduce applicant numbers, and force students to really think if college is necessary.

Community colleges will take more of a lead, tuition will plummet, kids will enter the work force without a “unforgivable” loan.

> This will reduce school costs, reduce applicant numbers, and force students to really think if college is necessary.

In a society where academic qualification is more and more required, making loans harder to get will only drive the poorest people to even more desperate actions to ensure their kids get a chance in life.

Don't get me wrong, the debt situation should be resolved (e.g. by making ALL education free, like in Europe), but the core problem of society that "undereducated" people are left to compete for menial tasks must also be fixed.

> In a society where academic qualification is more and more required

Which is only the case because we handed out so many diplomas that it became a stigma not to have one... Which happened because we handed out student loans too easily. It's causing the problem more than it's solving it.

We’re so obsessed with stopping cheaters or lazy good-for-nothing’s that we’ll privatize at all costs. That’s including, oddly enough, publicly distributing the risk those private institutions take on. Why not just cut out the middle man and have the government pay for the higher education of the low and middle class directly?

The purpose of loans is that the private sector should be able to better evaluate college ROI than a government agency and offers/prices appropriately. Admittedly, government loan backing breaks this model.

(Also it doesn't help that the least risky students are out of the pool by either parents funding or scholarships)