[umtrey]

An unintended consequence would be limiting education based on financial ability - a school would not admit a lower income student as opposed to a higher income student. While this does occur in loans, and also in property taxes feeding school districts... to say someone can't go to college here because they don't have the money now is a tough argument. The great equalizer will have taken the final plunge into a wealth-based advantage.

[fr0sty]

Plenty of rather poor people were going to college 50+ years ago. They worked during the summers, or took a year or more off first to earn money and then went off to school.

The graph in the article show college costs up 300% in the last 21 years.

The economist[1] reports an 11x increase in college tuition from 1978-2011.

The problem is definitely _not_ that people can't get loans but rather that college is so expensive that it requires loans in the first place.

[1] http://crimsoncavalier.blogspot.com/2010/09/who-says-theres-...

[pnathan]

Well, if college was cheaper, it wouldn't be so prejudical against poor people. :-/

[stonemetal]

It might exclude the middle, but the truly needy tend to get scholarships to cover college costs. Scholarship programs might have to be rethought out to compensate for the lack of loans.