&quot;<i>The quickest and most painful solution to the crisis would involve greatly reducing the amount of money that students can borrow to attend college.</i>&quot;<p>I suddenly think I agree. But I don&#x27;t expect it to happen.<p>The major downside, of course, is that a significant fraction of young Americans <i>won&#x27;t be able to go to college</i>. (The corollary, that they won&#x27;t be able to find jobs, is pretty much taking care of itself: they won&#x27;t be able to find jobs anyway.) By and large, going to college is a good thing in itself: being exposed to challenging ideas and different people is good for an individual and for a democratic populace, even if <i>I</i> (or you) don&#x27;t agree with the opinions someone ends up having. But in an environment like this, <i>that</i> isn&#x27;t really going to happen.<p>The other downside is that some people (a small minority?) with limited financial means won&#x27;t be able to reach their full potential. Take someone who could have gone to MIT and invented brilliant new things after being exposed to the full range of difficult ideas. Instead, they go into a job training program and come out excellent at a limited range of very marketable skills. (In the article&#x27;s situation, essentially all computer science, software engineering, information systems, and so on <i>are</i> job training programs, so....) Perhaps that&#x27;s actually a positive, as far as the individual is concerned, but it&#x27;s certainly an opportunity cost overall.