I've seen that hypothesized many, many times-- and while I don't necessarily disagree with it in principle, since I can certainly see a plausible mechanism at work there-- I sure wish that there were direct EVIDENCE to support it.


I'm not convinced that parallels to the housing bubble are accurate since educational debt is effectively unsecured debt any way you look at it, and real estate is not.


If there were clear causative evidence, I'd be a lot more comfortable with solutions like that proposed by Bostonian's link above.

As it stands, though, I'm hesitant, because I can certainly see the potential harm in some of those limitations for lower SES students.

I see it as equally plausible that "because we can" has been reason enough to drive costs and that demand has simply not evaporated because of the marketing industry surrounding higher ed, ergo demand has been driving increases in available credit, not the other way around.

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.