It aligns incentives between society and the student. If the student fucks around or majors in something useless, they're on the hook for it.
I'd gladly subsidize more STEM degrees with my taxpayer dollars but I won't give a single dollar towards underwater basket weaving type degrees. Every single humanities class I took in college was utterly useless. Advocates claim you're learning how to read and write competently but I learned that from business school, not sociology and history.
Because for some students the debt is paid off quickly, so in the long run the lower taxes from the state not paying for everyone's education make that student better off. For other students with useless degrees, the consequences of their actions come home to roost with their debt.
That being said I do think student debt should be dischargeable in bankruptcy. As is the market for education is dysfunctional.
Objectively, from the statistics, that's just not the case. Average undergraduate student loan debt in public California schools was $23,600 in 2019 [1]. That is less than the price of most new cars.
I'd gladly subsidize more STEM degrees with my taxpayer dollars but I won't give a single dollar towards underwater basket weaving type degrees. Every single humanities class I took in college was utterly useless. Advocates claim you're learning how to read and write competently but I learned that from business school, not sociology and history.