17 year old you should be able to default on student loans and get a clean slate, like any other kind of debt. If student loans worked exactly like regular loans (e.g you could declare bankruptcy, they weren't subsidized, etc.) then no one would give 17 year old you a loan unless you were statistically likely to be able to repay it (i.e majoring in something with good outcomes at a half-decent university). AND schools wouldn't expect you to be able to pull out 50k/year, they would have to adjust tuition accordingly, and we wouldn't have this crazy university tuition inflation.
We're in this mess because federal student loans live in a bizarro world where they're not subject to any of the normal market forces, checks, and balances that make regular debt work well for society. They are handed out without any kind of real due-diligence, and have absolutely no incentive to be good investments.
If we want to redistribute wealth to invest in education, that's fantastic, but we should just give it in the form of grants, scholarships, or (only in my dreams) some free regional federal universities and technical colleges. Instead we tried to play with the market and got burned, which isn't surprising to anyone with who has studied economics.
What does that have to do with "choosing an advantageous degree"? We are a land of (misappropriated) abundance and can absolutely support those who wish to engage in higher learning and push the boundaries of philosophy and science.
I don't want to counter your strawman with another, but not everyone needs to get an engineering degree.
