I agree because companies always give great rates and for no profit and are never assholes if your late a bit
There is no doubt that college prices are increasing -- faster than they should be. So why? I say it is because of ease of access to capital to attend college. It is the same in any market -- when you artifically prop up demand -- you increase prices.
I didn't take any loans out for school -- so maybe I am out of the loop on this manner of thinking -- but my BA cost $40,000 a year, and my MS was expensive as well...there was no real reason for that in my view -- was the quality of education that far superior to that of a $20,000 a year school? Maybe -- maybe not.
My wife took out loans for her law school (which I paid off after we got married), but let me give you an example of a classmate of hers that I think speaks to the underlying issue with government student loans.
She went to a top 25 law school, and tutition etc was around $40,000 a year. A classmate of hers was in her 40's, and quit her job to attend law school. Fine. This classmate of hers was a complete moron with her finances -- huge amounts of credit card debt, had filed for bankruptcy once before, and yet the government had no problem basically handing her the money to attend the law school. Certainly there are some nuances in how it was divided up and what rates she got etc...but point being, this lady had no business taking on more debt, but she took on another basically $200,000 once you count living expenses and everything else.
She was a poor student -- graduated near the bottom of the class, and has now failed the bar three times. She will never pay this money back -- something that was obvious given her track record, but she got it anyway. So...who gets screwed in this scenario? The taxpayers who have to basically take that loss.