Wouldn't it make more sense to just lower the interest rate to zero so the debt no longer compounds? I heard that idea mentioned the other day. Made more sense as a compromise than just canceling the debt. Some of these people were completely irresponsible and I hate to reward that. They could also stop giving student loans for unproductive degrees or at least limit the loan amounts if the average starting pay isn't high enough to pay it.
If you boil it down, every degree is productive. It demonstrates that a person can be trained and complete a set a goals to reach an end result. A person with a women's studies degree could work for a marketing firm to market to that targeted audience. Applied science degrees are easy to target a job because you got a degree in an very narrowly focused area, such as a Mechanical Engineer is going to do Mechanical Engineering things, Agronomist is going to be involved in Agriculture of some sort, etc.
The other crappy part is most careers that actually will pay decent lifelong increasing wages requires some sort of secondary education on the part of the person. Outside of trade unions, I don't see a whole lot of careers that have on the job training as progress your career starting from the bottom.
But I agree with you, lowering the interest rates to zero or 1% would make a lot of sense, you'd have a much lower payment each month over the life of the loan. Even go as far as eliminating the compounded interest, go back to initial loan balance, and reset the payments.