It's both. The availability of both grants and loans has been a huge factor, to be sure, but so have the direct subsidies to schools, and the special rules that make such loans more appealing to lenders, and all the "little ways" that regulation drives up either demand or cost for a college education. But it doesn't even matter, really. Whether they were made in the front room or the back room, many of the deals contributing to the debt crisis were made to benefit a few at the expense of the public. Decrying one kind of pandering while denying another never leads to good policy.
