Lindsey Luebchow* points out that one college, profiled in Inside Higher Ed recently, proved that one-on-one counciling can help reduce student debt, and it's actually possible to pull it off:

As the Barnard [College] example shows, proactive counseling can go a long way in preventing students from making bad decisions that will haunt them well after they leave college. But are similiar efforts feasible at larger universities with enrollments that exceed Barnard's 2,400 students? 

The answer is "yes"—at least at Colorado State University, which enrolls more than 20,000 undergraduates and about 4,000 additional graduate students. For more than a decade, financial aid administrators at the university, which participates in the federal Direct Loan program, have been concerned about students unnecessarily taking out non-federally guaranteed, private loans. And they have been doing something about it.

As a school that is about 10 times as large as Barnard, Colorado State officials realized that they didn't have the capacity to contact each and every borrower who applied for a private student loan. Instead, they decided that they would target private loan applicants who have not exhausted their federal loan eligibility. When private loan applications come in, the financial aid office flags students who either have not filled out a FAFSA or already have federal loans but still have eligibility remaining.

*I accidentally originally credited this post to Sara Mead.