I have read the exact same arguments swirling around the cost of education in another group recently and the differing positions expressed in this thread were raised almost exactly the same way there. What I read is the argument of the individual case(or personal responsibility)/each student's ability to pull themselves "up by the bootstraps" vs. what we want to do as a society to make higher education accessible for the good of society/our economy. In this way I see people talking past each other.

My father grew up on a farm without indoor plumbing. He weeded and chopped cotton every spring, summer and fall every year of his youth so that his family could live. He worked his way through college entirely without help from anyone. His degree allowed him enough upward mobility to raise me and my siblings in a decent house with no food insecurity but ongoing financial struggle. I never had to work as a kid and instead worked very hard in school and excelled academically and in several extracurriculars. I was able to attend our state flagship on full merit scholarship and go to law school on a full merit scholarship (and neither of these schools offers these scholarships any longer.)

Our family has experienced both pulling up by the bootstraps and the incremental socioeconomic advancement provided by higher education. It is admirable to see a student who can sacrifice so much to get an education but I don't think we as a society want a parking lot full of kids living in their cars so that they can access higher education.

What kinds of education do we need in our economy for us to be successful as a nation/state? What investment are we willing to make to ensure that our education needs are met in a way that will benefit everyone the most efficiently? Will that be direct investment of public money, incentives, tax breaks/benefits? All laws/taxes/spending are simply an expression of what kind of society we want to live in and what we value.

Looking ahead, we need a vibrant and thriving workforce to support the government entitlement demands of the large aging population in the US. Do we have enough high wage earners in the education pipeline to do this? Are they all going to be so burdened by debt that they defer the big purchases that drive the economy and generate revenue for governments and support local economies? In a certain sense, investing in education now will likely pay us back as a society exponentially through higher wages, more jobs and more spending by the lower debt graduates later.