Bankruptcy isn't a get out of debt free card. You can only get debt that you can't realistically repay discharged. The new graduate with a job at Google making $150k isn't getting their student loans discharged.

So the answer to your question is as much as I think they could reasonably repay based on their earning potential after graduation. Which is a reasonable answer to the whole problem except that it hands a huge advantage to rich kids who's parents can write that tuition check.

I'm not disagreeing with that point, I'm disagreeing that these sorts of loans should be legal at all, much less that they should be a common method of funding the education necessary for the knowledge workers of the future.

If you’re going to have people study for 4 years past grade 12, someone’s got to pick up the tab for their rent, food, entertainment, and clothes/supplies at least.

If we disallow lending, that would tend to limit the attendance at “away from home” colleges and universities to the upper middle and upper classes. I don’t know that outcome is obviously “better”. It would be a massive boon to the wealthier families as compared to today.

I benefited massively from student loans and Army ROTC scholarship; I don’t want to see that taken away from future generations (even if removing that would benefit my family).

Rather than loans, we should reinvest in state universities, which in general have been massively defunded over the past decades, and also tie that additionally funding to reduced student costs so that the money goes where it should. The decision to attend university should be made more on the basis of student capabilities and available slots than on having big loans or ROTC access (and ROTC experience is a great thing, that has its own wonderful merits)