Less demand should reduce the price to attend, right?
* Many/most loads are backed by the government.
* Government doesn't put any restrictions on the amount of the loan.
* Colleges are paid regardless if a student is unable to pay a load.
There is little price pressure on colleges right now. Maybe students are finally figuring out being burdened with a lot of debt is bad, but it's more of an indirect signal to colleges. Colleges only will feel pain if students start going straight into industry or trade schools.
Ideally, the government should get out of backing student loans. That would make underwriters actually look at the chance that a given person would be able to pay-back said loan with a given degree. This would help apply some price pressures. As well, if colleges could somehow take a partial financial hit if students weren't able to pay back a loan, maybe that would help as well.
For selective colleges I think the impact will be negligible. They already reject a sizeable fraction of applicants so it would be less painful for them to respond to a shrinking applicant pool by rejecting a slightly smaller fraction of that pool.
And many of the rest may not be able to afford to lower the price due to administrative bloat:
"For example three universities, the California Institute of Technology, Duke University, and the University of California at San Diego actually have more non-faculty employees on campus than students."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/admini...
For many colleges it would be substantially less painful to slowly go bankrupt than to attempt to fire half of the staff. Perhaps new lower-priced entrants will emerge from the wreckage, but I don't think most existing schools can afford to lower their prices at this point.