When a system is outwardly against giving the vast majority of people being able to actually pay for these things, there is a problem.
Education makes society better. The more people educated, the better off we are. The more people educated and with the ability to spend money without having to pay off ludicrously high loans, infinitely better.
I'm not from an overly wealthy family, but I'm firmly upper middle class and I'm not coming out of school with loans, for which I'm very grateful...but my friends are. And they've got fantastic potential that's being smothered. I've got brothers in my chapter who are terrified of the prospect that they, even with pretty intensive STEM degrees, won't be able to break even. For some of our alumni, it's happened already. The same, of course, applies to my GDI friends. Not across the board, and certainly more successes than failures, but the close calls and horror stories are enough to show there is a problem.
The free market failed us. It can do good, and it can do bad. But when you've got a pretty massive portion of the population struggling to do something MORE with their lives, having to settle just to break even, I'd say that's factors in as bad.
People rant about economic freedom, but what type of freedom is it when you can't be free to pursue your desired course? What type of freedom is it where one of the few ways to do more than just survive in life and rise above your family's station is to subject yourself to a grueling burden that may well sabotage you?
I'm sorry for the rant and I really don't mean to come off as abrasive, but to say that the education situation isn't one warranting intervention, and that those in it subjected themselves to it by choice, is an oversimplification of a bigger issue. Yes, you choose to go to college...but why should I have to go to electrical school if I WANT to be a lawyer? If I have the capacity to do great things with the position, why should $80,000 of undergrad loans be an anchor I can't cut off, to say nothing of law school.
That's not freedom. There is no choice in that arrangement. Choosing a life that makes you unhappy, that stops you from realizing your fullest potential, because you can't afford the path you can be on when it's well within the accommodations of society to do so with no hassle or detriment to others, is a choice in the same way doing whatever a gunman tells you to do because he's got a pistol to your head is. Sure, you have a choice, but is the bad option REALLY an option?