Or stop insuring student loans with taxpayer money
No lender with a shred of sense would have financed a master's in guitar theory or English in the past 40 years. There are few jobs that require those specialties and thousands of people waiting for somebody to die to play the job lottery - until fate makes its miraculous way to them it's Starbucks or a forklift driver, and nobody's paying off a graduate degree loans on $12/hr. Financing those students is one of the worst investments you can make
But the government is telling them to do it, and promising to pay it when they're unable to. So why wouldn't they?
"Can I borrow $20 for heroin? I'll uhhh probably pay you back tomorrow maybe"
"No lol"
"Hey, I'm the government, if you loan him that $20 I'll pay you $30 if he dips"
"Uhhhhhh ok? Anybody else need heroin money?"
If we pay student debt back without addressing the root cause we'll be back where we are now in ten to twenty years tops