Free Republic

Mark Twain famously said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” That observation could easily be applied to the situation facing students who have amassed large college debt burdens: they think they know that those debts cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. But that just ain’t so. The “undue hardship” provision in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code says that student loans cannot be discharged unless “excepting such debt … would impose an undue hardship on the debtor and the debtor’s dependents….” Just how difficult is it for a...

On April 15 Tax Day, Americans paid about the same amount of income tax as total student loans outstanding. The St. Louis Federal Reserve on the same day published a report titled ‘Student Loan Delinquency: A Big Problem Getting Worse?' The Fed has determined that of the $1.3 trillion in non-bankruptcy-dischargeable student loans, the delinquency rate for students in repayment is over 27 percent. With tuition at the University of California and other top schools growing faster than inflation, student loan defaults are skyrocketing. Prior published student loan reports have stated that the “30+ days delinquency rate for all student...

rresponsibility: A new report finds that 27.3% of student loans are delinquent. Why does this matter? Because thanks to President Obama, about $1 trillion dollars of student loan debt is owed to the federal government. Obama keeps trying to portray the student loan crisis as a problem suffered by students burdened by a mountain of debt when they graduate, and who are unable to make enough money to pay it back. But that's not the real crisis. First, average student loan debt is only a little over $20,000. A student who gave up his $5-a-day Starbucks habit could pay off...