That's hard to do because young students haven't had time to build credit history, you can't extrapolate creditworthiness from SAT/ACT scores without hurting students from poorly-funded education systems, and most importantly by rejecting to offer loans, you are preventing a student from a shot at their dream school which could pull a whole family out of poverty in a decade.
The problem isn't how the loans should be disbursed, managed, repaid, or forgiven. The problem is that the base tuition is so high that students need loans. Loans should be for housing, gym memberships, extra-curriculars. I am absolutely ok with my Federal, state, and local taxes funding actual education, not college stadiums. This would also incentivize schools to reduce costs for the basic education and charge people who can afford to pay for the full "college experience."
But over the years state governments keep cutting funding for colleges and universities and students keep having to take out loans. And since loans are easy to get and cannot be discharged, everyone is incentivized to do anything to get more students who will pay a higher tuition. It is a terrible cycle that I hope either gets obsoleted by virtual education, trade schools, or some miracle.
That was all part of California's master plan for higher education at the end of the 60s. Unfortunately the anti-government folks got Prop 13 passed and put an end to tuition free college and university.
That is a terrible metric. There are plenty of objectively important professions that require advanced degrees and don't pay well. Teachers, nurses, and yeah doctors. Take a look at how much residents or general practitioners get paid. Sure you could make millions hawking voodoo to Peter Thiel but we've also got a shortage of GPs in the United States.
Profit is the wrong motive for (public) education. I'm sure you were aiming more at the underwater basketweaving crowd but even art plays an important role in society.
Loans are debt. They have to be paid back. So yeah, of course how much someone will make after school is relevant here. If doctors in the US didn't make bongo bucks, med school costing 250k+ would be absolutely insane (rather than just moderately insane).
Glassdoor (ugh) estimates base pay at about $160k annually for a general practitioner. You're not getting rich off of that salary, especially not in a HCOLA.
Those teachers and nurses you are referring to should absolutely not be saddled with loans they will never be able to repay, and the situation now, where many of these people will be making large student loan payments into retirement or near death, is unconscionable.
There are much better ways to support people who want to go into these professions than signing them up, many at the age of 17 or 18, for a lifetime of crushing debt.
That pretty much defeats the point of the system, to give loans to poor people to give them a chance.
Something like that could happen again, even with federal dollars - universities would make the first year cheap, and based upon high school transcripts + SAT / ACT + first year grades, then make a real loan.
Since student loans aren't dischargeable, it means that lenders have no incentive to do any due diligence. On the contrary, their incentive is to load students up with as much debt as possible.
Yes, making student loans dischargeable would mean fewer students would get loans, but that's the point. Lenders shouldn't be giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars to students whose career options would then put them in indentured servitude for decades.