The solution is to demand the colleges and universities repay the student loans using their endowments which run into billions of dollars.
If the students were ripped off, it is the colleges and universities that screwed them. If higher education is a scam, let the scammers payoff the loans. The scammers got the proceeds of the student loans and gave the students no way to earn their way out of the debt created by vastly overcharging for college educations.
Taking the money out of the hides of the schools would quiet much of the talk of student loan forgiveness. I strongly suspect that many students are steered into loans when other methods of paying for their education would also work. Schools have been suffering a massive bloat in administrative staff for the last 30+ years, pare this back and the cost of education would fall significantly.
Forcing higher ed to cut personnel, and actually steer students to various work/co-op programs to pay for their education will reduce the number of people insulated from reality.
Good idea, but also remove the restrictions on discharge in bankruptcy on student loans. Also remove FedGov underwriting all student loans. If a student loan lender didn’t have the guarantees the loan wouldn’t be discharged in bankruptcy you would have the lenders actually looking at whether the loan could be repaid. So you would generally have loans for degrees that would actually make money, instead of stuff like gender studies.
Have the university endowments seized to repay the previous student loans that were defaulted.