(Replying to PARENT post)
Not just that; it's a way to encourage people with a specific set of traits to take certain jobs.
If I were more cynical, I'd suggest that a group of bankers was looking for ways to create a generation of debt slaves, and someone came up with "how about we make sure that their high school teachers are all people who can't manage to effectively manage their money". I'm not quite that cynical, and I don't think this was deliberate -- but the fact remains that creating a strong financial incentive to become a teacher but only if you can't pay your debts is not exactly consistent with the idea that kids should gain some financial literacy while in school.
(Replying to PARENT post)
The program is a great example of the power of the federal government to lift all boats, even when the local governance doesn’t care at all. We see lots of examples of mostly red-state governance where passing costs off to other jurisdictions is essentially government policy. (Example: https://www.thedailybeast.com/nevada-sued-for-greyhound-ther... )
This doesn’t let them do that for several professions.
(Replying to PARENT post)
It's basically a very weird way to compensate people for certain kinds of jobs.
The accounting is a mess, it's a promise for the future so it doesn't show up as a budget problem tofay, but will later.
It's very uneven -- some people take out huge loans and other borrow more modestly. The borrowed money can be used for lots of non-educational things, so it creates an incentive to borrow more than you really need.
And then it's a big yes or no at the end, not gradual, so it sticks people to jobs and makes a big dramatic event after ten years.