Freely available student loans have pumped enormous amounts of money into the system, and tuition prices increased accordingly, driving the need for yet more loans.
In the end what we have is young people taking on unthinkable amounts of debt to get the same level of education that they did 40 years ago, but now with nicer student centers and bigger stadiums (and, somehow, instructors who are paid less than before).
If we cut off the endless supply of loans, and instead use limited grants to continue to foster diversity, we can reverse the cycle. Schools will once again have to compete on cost.
Then we can talk about loan forgiveness for those who were victimized by the current system. But doing the forgiveness before fixing the system only makes the problem worse.