Credit constraints are not something we should be basing policy around:
Given the current college financial support arrangements that are available to low income and minority children in the U.S, the phenomenon of bright students being denied access to college because of credit constraints is an empirically unimportant phenomenon.
As Verbatim is often fond of saying--correctly--having an educated population is indeed important, and policy has a role in promoting that. But college is
already very heavily subsidised (with recent increases in tuition being driven
entirely by
increases in subsidisation), and no argument has actually been made by Bernie or his supporters as to why the current level of subsidisation is below optimal.
And, as I've said many times, reform of K-12 education absolutely needs to take precedence here. Trying to implement sweeping reforms to tertiary education when
most high school grads aren't even ready for college is a waste of both political capital and opportunities for the people we're trying to help in the first place. Given movement in the
college wage premium, it's also hyperbole to suggest students are going to be saddled with crippling debt.
It's also not true, as Bernie claims, that the US gov't makes a profit on student loans. Actually, they
make a loss of $88bn. Cutting interest rates also won't help all that much, given the loans are usually repaid on a 10-year schedule.
I actually have to wonder how somebody so ignorant has so much support in the Democratic Party. Then again the frontrunner is at worst a criminal, at best negligent. And the GOP race is divided between an invertebrate, a grumpy old man who should've dropped out already and a hyper-religious sociopath.
Bernie Sanders' college plan is dumb