> Citizens who make similar mistakes when they're young get their lives destroyed.
Except in this case the mistake is that the government is willing to guarantee huge loans made to an 18-year-old. There are colleges out there that you can graduate with only a couple thousand dollars of debt and there are other colleges where you can graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.
A potential fix would be to limit the amount of government-backed student loans to something people can reasonably pay off. If students want to go beyond that, they would need to convince a bank that funding the more extravagant tuition was a reasonable risk to take. With the government-backed student loans, you rely on an 18-year-old to accurately do the risk analysis themselves and the current situation seems to indicate many aren't good at doing this.
Except in this case the mistake is that the government is willing to guarantee huge loans made to an 18-year-old. There are colleges out there that you can graduate with only a couple thousand dollars of debt and there are other colleges where you can graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.
A potential fix would be to limit the amount of government-backed student loans to something people can reasonably pay off. If students want to go beyond that, they would need to convince a bank that funding the more extravagant tuition was a reasonable risk to take. With the government-backed student loans, you rely on an 18-year-old to accurately do the risk analysis themselves and the current situation seems to indicate many aren't good at doing this.