Last Monday, during a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton announced a plan to address the high cost of college and the eye-popping $1.2 trillion in outstanding loans that students still owe to lenders and to the Department of Education. Indeed, a solution to this national travesty is long overdue. Almost three quarters of students graduate with an average debt load of $35,000. Of 40 million student debtors, 8 million are already in default. In another sign of crisis, more than 40 percent of all borrowers are not yet in repayment, according to the New York Federal Reserve. This suggests that an even bigger wave of defaults may be on the way.

We need look no further than the predatory for-profit college sector to see what happens when millions of students take on debt to gain credentials for jobs that often don’t exist or don’t pay wages that would allow them to repay their loans. Default rates are highest at for-profit institutions that aggressively target low-income people and students of color. These institutions promise students education that leads to good jobs, yet often fail to live up to their claims, all while enriching shareholders and executives with billions from the federal student loan program and paying off lobbyists and politicians to keep the racket going. Meanwhile, the students themselves have virtually no recourse to dispute their loans or get out from under crushing payments that could last for decades.

Clinton’s plan addresses none of the problems that students and families are actually facing, no matter which type of college they attended. She proposes to provide grants to states that would commit to increasing funding for higher education and can guarantee that students would not have to take out loans to attend college. For people already in debt, Clinton would call on Congress to allow them to refinance their student loans at a lower rate.

The $350 billion program, to be paid for, according to the Clinton campaign, “by limiting certain tax expenditures for high-income taxpayers,” was hailed by the Washington Post’s Wonkblog as “a comprehensive agenda that encompasses just about evertything on the (Democratic) party's wishlist.” But the truth is that it represents yet another sad attempt by a politician to pretend to care. The proposal repeats a tired formula favored by both major parties: Make a few tweaks to the current failed system and then rebrand it under a different name and sell it as new thinking. For example, Clinton’s plan is based on assuring that “no student” should borrow for college. That sounds good. But what does it mean? It does not mean that Clinton supports ending tuition at all public 2- and 4- year colleges. Instead, Clinton’s plan would require students to pay out of pocket for education. The only difference is that politicians and policy makers will stop calling it “debt.”