<p>Overall, it should be the colleges own choice to go about how it charges it’s students.</p>
<p>Although I must ask, why should the government support tuition costs more? That’s why it’s so high in the first place.</p>
<p>The government needs to completely step out of the game with student loans (such as PLUS) and only offer maybe pell grants. The other key step it must take if it chooses to do so, would be to make student loans dis-chargeable through bankruptcy. The shark private lending market in student loans would all but disappear and all the easy money to colleges that gets spent on giant new stadiums would disappear as well. If nobody is able to go to college because they can’t take out loans to do so, where will college’s get their money from? Nowhere. No demand at current price levels means prices either go down, or the college goes out of existence.</p>
<p>Something else I’ve thought of, though which kind of goes against my ‘free-market’ beliefs is to have the government require college’s to make any loans directly to students (if the college chooses to ‘approve’ the student) and of course still keep the loans dis-chargeable through bankruptcy. It would suddenly be in the college’s best interest to make sure you get a job that can pay back the loans, and/or to also have tuition at an affordable level which can be paid back. Because if you default, there’s a loss that cuts directly into the college’s balance sheet.</p>
<p>With loans from the federal government and private lenders, colleges do not care if you are otherwise able to pay back your loans eventually. They already have the money, it isn’t their problem.</p>