My favorite idea is to tie student loans and grants not to the individual per say, but rather their choice of institution and study. For example, a student going to MIT for a hard, well-paying science career should be able to access more capital at a better rate than someone attending a party school to major in a lower-paying humanities field. Some have taken the current state of things to imply a failure of capitalism - when in fact what we are seeing is a distortion by non-capitalist principals. When you subsidize without regard for investment risk you skew the incentive structure. As it stands the optimum result is generated by maximizing enrollment and changing whatever additional sum a student can pay on top of what the government provides. Since it doesn't matter what they major in, or what the institutional quality is, the market adapts accordingly. By attaching student loan quantities and qualities to both the major and institution, we ensure equal access to the individual but leave market incentives to ensure quality. The break down in academic quality and corresponding labor market corrections is entirely predicated on institutional optimization through misalignments in subsidization. You can still make the system fair to individuals from non-traditional backgrounds without making it equal. I would argue that you can even do more to increase equitability to historically marginalized groups once you decouple from the 'flat rate' approach. The system is broken because we broke it. The solution is not to continue down the path of misaligned incentives but rather make sure the incentives are properly considered.