[hikingsimulator]

The main issue with this approach is that it doesn't help people who struggle financially or come from disfavorable backgrounds -- whom federal student loans aimed to help.

Some sets of circumstances don't favor score maximization on such tests, whereas being in a high income family favors prior access to education that help get those scores for instance. Ergo you'd not solve a better access to education that way.

Similarly, means testing for those slots also has negatives incentives. It's a hard issue to solve.

[whimsicalism]

Test scores are one of the primary vehicles for social mobility in modern America. There are other reasons for correlations between affluence and test scores beyond just environmental unfairness.

[gedy]

Offering loans to those who struggle financially is a problem.

Offer them scholarships if they have potential, not loans for everyone.

[ethbr1]

Federal student loans themselves have always expressed the tension in parent poster's dichotomy.

On the one hand, we could fund college for only those who need the help.

On the other hand, that would be a political shitstorm because people with means wouldn't receive as much (or potentially even any) benefit.

So the system now has lots of loopholes and sliding scales, so that everyone gets some benefit and supports it. Replace states with families, and it's the NASA approach to political support.

Personally, I think the removal of objective testing is dumb. It may be income/background correlated, but it is objective.

You can address the disparities by providing benefit to those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

More critically, you want a system that doesn't allocate money to 'dumb/lazy but also from an advantaged background'.