Yes. All correct. The main things are (a) Keep government out of process, do not guarantee loans, and (b) do not allow students to borrow too much (unless they borrow privately).
I know kids who live on these loans, do not really engage seriously in college full time but enroll in all sorts of fly by night “schools”, tech programs, on-line scams etc which are just set up to help students live off their loans and kickback some to the “school”. Racket. Much abuse. These people are terrible loans risks.
Yep—all good points.
If students don’t otherwise have resources, scholarships, creditworthiness, whatever, there are community colleges that can get them through their first two years and state schools that they can attend part-time after that. The states already subsidize higher education well enough without the feds being involved at all.
(And if the states didn’t subsidize it, the market would provide cost-effective programs.)