My high school counselors frequently came by classes and spoke about college---while they didn't talk about the financials in detail, they easily could have. It'd be as simple as doing a quick calculation on the board of how long it will take to pay off some amount of debt. Now whether that advice would stick in the students' heads, I don't know, but they should at least try. There's also high school economics classes that should be discussing this. I was required to take one and my teacher actually did a better job of explaining the cost of college than the counselors.