Earlier quoted context omitted.
For what it's worth (I learned this recently and was equally surprised by it) student loans were not non-dischargable until 2005. Ie, for all time before 2005, a student could do what you describe, and as far as I know it wasn't a widespread practice. It is a relatively new thing that really only came in to existance coincidentally around the same time that education became so expensive that going through the effort…
Bankruptcies have to get approved by a judge, and often debt is restructured instead of being discharged. The scenario where someone takes on a bunch of debt then declares bankruptcy on graduation is a joke because judges wouldn't allow it. They may get their loan deferred or restructured to help buy time to get a job, but they wouldn't just discharge it like that. These kind of made up "what if" scenarios to justify…
I was implying that education should never have been allowed to become so unreasonably expensive and unsustainable that it has to be propped up with special exceptions.