I'm not even sure parental credit would slow things down. That might send more of the less-privileged students to smaller universities and community colleges, b

I'm not even sure parental credit would slow things down. That might send more of the less-privileged students to smaller universities and community colleges, but I'm not sure they constitute a large fraction of major university students in the first place. And for those students whose parents credit would justify a 60k loan, how many of those couldn't also get an 80k loan, on student loan terms (rates and repayment schedules)? I think all you'd do there is make it increasingly harder for parents of college-age children to get any further credit and draw down their consumption as college prices continued to grow. (Surely they'll rank co-signing Junior's college loans as more important than a cottage or condo in the sunshine belt.) I think the bigger problem is that the degree and institution aren't considered in the loan process. I don't know how you'd even begin to structure an objective analysis, but it seems fundamentally wrong that the government will guarantee an 80k loan today for a degree that cost 60k yesterday, even though the market for that degree hasn't moved and the program itself is largely undifferentiated from what it was yesterday, let alone from competing universities charging 40k or less for substantially the same program.