> Stick the institutions with the bad debt

Fair, but not legal without some kind of justification. If it could be argued that the institution committed fraud against the student by promising them a job, then that could be the ill-gotten gains, and then it's legal.

But this is all a bunch of complex hoops to jump through, and of course every judge will automatically say the institutions are angels, because of course they will...

So hunting down the (mostly Democrat) students and squeezing it out of them is the most accessible option for the moment, and it doesn't require any special approval...