A number of letter writers The Wall Street Journal‘s Wednesday Letters column expressed their concerns about student debt. One comment, though, jumped in my direction.

It is time for the federal government to get out of the student-loan business.

The writer is well along; that’s a critical half of the problem.

The other critical half, is to not borrow in the first place. If a person can’t afford to go to college on his own nickel or on scholarships, he should go to a trade school or a community college that teaches trades.

Then get a job. The trades are more than honorable jobs, they’re their own Critical Items in our economy: nothing gets built—including the Progressive-Democrats’ turtles all the way down infrastructure—without them. And, the trades provide a nice income as well as actual work experience and time in the real world during which the person can arrive at a more informed decision about what he wants to do with his life and/or what he wants to get out of college.

And in the latter case, he can be accumulating a sum of his own money with which to cover his college costs.