[fastaguy88]

I suppose this seems to make sense if you believe that higher education costs are a true market that has found some kind of equilibrium. But it's not.

College graduate parents are going to try very hard to send their kids to college, and today, the vast majority of students at 4 year colleges come from families with college graduate parents. When tuitions were low, this did not require much sacrifice for those parents. When prices went up, those parents continued to send their kids to college, making greater sacrifices, but often without taking out a loan (at least for public universities). Today, 42% of undergraduates at public universities have no debt.[0]

No doubt loans also had an effect -- among other things, they made it easier for state politicians to reduce support for public universities. But since 40% of students at public universities have no debt, and costs increased more than 5 fold, it is hard to argue that loans were the major factor driving up the cost. To support the loan driving argument, it would be useful to see relationship between the fraction of students with loans and college costs. Simply saying that costs went up when loans became more available ignores many other changes in education finance.

[0] https://www.aplu.org/projects-and-initiatives/college-costs-...

[baconandeggs]

We are not arguing about the cost of education because students can't pay the tuition; they pay the tuition every year with no problem even though it keeps rising. The argument is because after they graduate they have a mountain of student debt. Students have a debt problem not a tuition problem. Colleges will keep raising prices as long as the students keep paying them because that is how markets work.

Loans have enabled all those "changes in education finance", all of them. You don't need to have 100% reach to influence a market, you don't even need to be technically in the same market to influence another one (see smartphones and taxis).