The lead of this article is very hyperbolic. Even if a person competely defaults and allows default judgement against them, the maximum allowed penalty is a gar

The lead of this article is very hyperbolic. Even if a person competely defaults and allows default judgement against them, the maximum allowed penalty is a garnishment of 15% of income after tax. On a salary of $18,000 that would be at most $2,700 or $225 a month. That will be a never ending payment, but it's hardly time to go seppuku. Aside from the hyperbole, I do think the article has a fair point. And there's a very simple solution. Align the interests of lenders with borrowers. There are a lot of ways to do this. One would be to enable borrowers to declare bankruptcy meaning lenders would not be throwing money around like beads at Mardis Gras. Another option is to change the terms of students loans to be as special as their permanence is. Require student loans be paid back in terms of x% of income for the x% of years after graduation. This would heavily incentivize loan agencies into ensuring a college education does actually lead to a good job. The reduction in lending would also reduce the cost of education as a whole. As the article mentions, the bloating in tuition and other rates is mostly just a factor of greed. If you offer a product valued as practically priceless, and a consumer's available income is x then your price is going to approach x. 'Mardi gras lenders' push x higher and higher to no end. Ultimately there are lots of solutions. But I expect we'll do nothing. As the 15% I mentioned above gaurantees that even 'bad loans' are good, from the perspective of a lender. Even if somebody gets stuck working in aggregate $30k jobs (inflation adjusted) for the next 50 years, that's $1.5 million with 15% there equaling out to $225k. That's an extremely healthy profit even on defaults. To New Orleans we go!