This. If you want education to be cheaper or free, you'll need to give up some amount of choice.

Most states in the US already have public university systems, but that isn't where most of the debt comes from.

Everyone wants to go to Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, etc.

Yep, and kids also smoke, vape, do drugs, gamble, assault people, play too many video games, etc.

The answers lie in educating them to make good decisions, and be there to help when good decisions happen to turn out poorly. The current dilemma is largely due to provably bad decisions (by students, banks, universities, government).

Are student loans the most pressing "bad decision" we have as a society? Definitely not. Is it a very electable topic? Yep

Agree, but the result will be that far fewer kids get to go to college, or get to go to the best college that they can get into.

Loans will only be granted to students who have a track record of high achievement, parents willing to co-sign, and going into majors that make economic sense.

Enrollment will drop, universities will stop offering passion majors, mass layoffs in library science, academia, and college administrations (likely to the tune of 1M+ people).

In the end, students will be told by federal examination which school and major they get to pursue, or whether they get to go to college at all.

That's assuming the government is both effective and efficient in this process.

This is essentially how most consumer economics work.

But isn't it the goal? To make sure only the kids who have the brains and the right class to make value out of a degree (or don't care about value because their parents have cash), will go to study, not "just about everyone" as now. Working class kids without outstanding abilities should go to trade schools/apprenticeships and do blue collar labor. It pays decent bucks, and brings value to society too.

I think therec would also need to be a cultural shift to make trade schools and apprenticeships more acceptable, and make financial assistance for them more accessible.

And for that matter, I think it could make since to have trade schools for white colllar jobs too. In some sense that is what coding camps are, although I'd like to see them be a little more rigorous and include things like security, software design, algorithms, etc.

As for passion subjects and arts, maybe have more, and higher quality community classes available that people can go to when they already have a decent job and can pay for them outright instead of accruing massive debt.

This already is the case. 75% of student debt is private universities and colleges.

If you get into Stanford but can't afford it, a loan seems like a good idea, but in reality the loan eligibility should consider the degree and future earning potential (along the same lines of how banks qualify other types of loans).

If we simply cancel student debt or remove private colleges' ability to charge a market rate the result will be no more private colleges (similar to other countries with fully publicly funded education). In these countries you typically have a national exam that determines where you go, or you have to lottery in to a school if it isn't in your district.