I’m tempted to simply say we ought to end the subsidies altogether, but I don’t know what the counterfactual is.  When my parents were in college, it was possible to work your way through a good four year school; these days, that’s difficult to impossible.  Have loans really increased access?  Or have they simply made it more expensive?  Is the marginal supply those loans created–like the for-profit diploma mills–actually adding value, or merely allowing naive students to beggar themselves for a worthless degree?  I’m fairly comfortable diagnosing the problem.  But I’m less sure of what the solution should be.

The law of unintended consequences in play here.