[ggoss]

At least for public universities, how about sidestepping the lenders entirely, and replacinh tuition with payment of a fixed percent (say 20%) of 10-year post-graduation income?

Aside from the effects that wealth can have on early education (which can't really be dealt with effectively so late in the education process anyways), this would eliminate wealth as a barrier to higher education or to continuity of higher education, and protect students from both predatory lenders and misleading marketing by universities. This would also incentivize colleges to invest more heavily into the aspects of education that actually contribute to career success (e.g. practical skills over fancier stadiums) and to rebalance the number of degrees they offer in each field to what is actually valued by society. For example, if they graduate too many people with degrees in communication, and only half get jobs and pay for the education, then maybe they offered too many communication degrees. Likewise, if every mechanical engineer graduated paid highly for their educations in the 10 years post graduation, they should consider offering more of those degrees. Interestingly, this would incentivize high-value education without any more information than level-of-payment; if, for some unknown reason, all of a university's 'basket weaving' graduates make tens of millions after graduation, then you don't need to know how they made so much money to know that you did something right in how you educated them.