IMHO, college tuition and student loans should be handled the way that the healthcare marketplace of the ACA should’ve been handled: less carrot, more stick.
To the banks/insurance companies:
“If you want to continue to do business with the American public, you must offer competitively priced insurance packages/low or zero interest loans for education on a government run portal. If you don’t serve the public in this way, you’ll be prohibited from accessing the American people as a market for your for-profit business.”
Honestly, the American Consumer Is the greatest driver of global economic growth and domestic economic stability in the world, and the American government’s single most valuable economic asset. That the government chooses, through its policy decisions to exploit and abuse this asset rather than protect it, grow it, and prosper alongside it speaks to who’s really calling the shots.
Sure, it would piss off the hard-line “free market” advocates, but small businesses pay taxes at a level that impacts their profitability in a way that larger corporations simply don’t. I feel it’s more than fair to level that playing field by some small degree by locking access to the American consumer behind the condition of having to contribute to the betterment of that market.