I don't have the slightest clue. But I'd like to know. Could actually be working to some degree and make a change in such weird systems as 30years of debt for the opportunity to earn money. To me that's the only interesting thought in the whole article.
The issue isn't really with the people making the loans (banks etc) so much as it is with the colleges and universities who have steadily increased tuition at unprecedented rates for the last several years. (Which, by the way, is one of the things that made me suspicious about this article: the student loan debt bubble is an issue of the 2000s, not an issue of the 1980s, which is when this author went to college. So it seemed to me weird he was bemoaning what is commonly acknowledged as a recent problem of our times when, at the time this guy was in college, tuition on average was about 5k/year ) The real equivalent solution would be if everyone stopped going to college. Then the colleges would not have income and would be forced to lower prices to a more reasonable level. Student loans are just another form of loan. It's like a mortgage. They are not inherently bad. The people collecting on the loans that students committed to repaying are not the bad people here. It is the schools who are gauging students based off of - as you say - the potential that they will earn more money with a degree as opposed to without. And in 1985, a college degree was a lot more than a promise of a job or a promise to earn more. Back then it was much closer to a guarantee.