Gadol,
there is a real problem here – uneducated masses would improve their life by better education and they may or may not achieve that by going to college and then having debt (after also getting grants).
Let’s see what would be a reasonable “investment”:
– identify productive majors and schools based on school previous track record.
– before someone goes to school, provide him low-cost subsidized insurance: if someone goes into an approved school/major and then does not succeed, then his loans are partially forgiven.
This would let people take (reasonable) personal risk, benefit if they succeed and not be total losers if they don’t.
There is also a private market solution, that there are some limited experiments on:
– investors pay for school (partially or fully) in return for a percentage of future earnings. These could be school themselves or separate investors.
Not sure how easy to push this further given all the giveaways.