Am I the only one that thinks it's backwards that student loans can't be discharged? It should be one of the only kinds of loans you can discharge. Why would you as a nation want to saddle your youngest most ambitious and most valuable people?
That's why student loans shouldn't exist; if the federal government is going to subsidize higher education, it should be by grants, student out-of-pocket cost limits tied to accepting federal research and other funding, and other non-loan mechanisms, not forcing students into debt.
(Private student loans, OTOH, should be dischargeable the same as other unsecured debt, and if lenders don't like it they don't have to issue loans.)
[1] https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/28362...
Same reason they can collect the debt using wage garnishments and property liens, methods that aren't available to most creditors.
This is only explained to some students (it was to me). But no one plans on not having money in the far future, regardless of what warnings they receive
No, it's not; it predates direct loans existing, much less being the only form of federal student loan, and applies to private, non-government-guaranteed student loans, as well.
> Same reason they can collect the debt using wage garnishments and property liens, methods that aren't available to most creditors.
Property liens and garnishment are available to most creditors after securing a judgement against a debtor.
> This is only explained to some students (it was to me).
It’s good that only some students are subject to that complete fabrication, though it would be better if none were.
The government does not need a court judgement against a debtor before garnishing wages, withholding returns, etc. This is why the majority of these actions are for child support and student debt, not for consumer debt.
The rules for student debt repayment started with the premise that a different process was in use for money owed to (or backed by) the federal government
For reference, visit any nation with these rights. You will find more small businesses, fewer franchised chains, and happier people.
Sure, the student loan can only go to a school but neither has any collateral which makes them the most similar loan products. So go get any 18 year old to try to get a $20,000 personal loan without any credit and see what the rates are and if lenders would even give it to them.
There was an immediate patch to this, and then longer term solutions as well. The basic, Econ101 level thought behind this is that if you go into debt to buy a car or a house or anything tangible and the debt proves too much the bank can take those assets back if you declare bankruptcy.[1] But how does that work for a degree or the knowledge in your head? What can they take from that?
Another issue is fairness. If student loans paid attention to how likely they were to be paid back then, as a first approximation, they would only be offered to people with above average income attending elite schools and poor people would be cut out of college more completely than they currently are- and they would pay much more attention to your degree, school etc. Everyone who goes to a Ivy would get loans, many people who go to regional schools wouldn't, because they aren't good bets to pay off the loans (people who graduate, as a first approximation, pay off loans; people who drop out don't, and community colleges and regional schools which focus on non-traditional students who have real lives already have much higher drop-out rates than Harvard- this is different in practice because of Pell Grants but that's a different issue). The reason that they are offered student loans is because the government guarantees them, so they have lower interest rates (yes its higher than a mortgage, but its much lower than a credit card or payday loan, which are the other unsecured loans the average person has access to), ignore your school, major, etc. and are available to every US citizen.
But if the government guarantees the loan, then isn't someone who defaults on this unsecured debt ripping off the American taxpayer? Easy to see how this can be gamed and the student portrayed as the bad guy, because of how the system works. Even those doctors at the beginning deserve a better system, but Americans first instinct wasn't 'let's fix this so that the doctors don't go into such debt' it was "lets make sure those cheaters don't profit off of ripping off the taxpayer." And that instinct is how we ended up here.
[1]: Obviously if you buy a new car the debt will be greater than the value of the car (because the car loses so much value when you drive it off the lot) but they have fancy economic models to account for that, and the house has an appraisal to prove that it can be sold for more than they are loaning out.
Private lenders do try and cherry-pick the very best borrowers out of the federal system; my wife graduated 5 years ago with a doctorate in Pharmacy and >100,000 in debt, and she got many advertisements to refinance her education loans because she was a pharmacist who was paying enough to finish off her loans in 5 years- she was a great bet to pay off her loans in total, so SoFi, Navient and a whole bunch of their competitors wanted her to refinance through them, but only the DoE was interested in paying for her at the beginning of grad school.
That's the whole thesis behind making the loans in the first place.
But also, the ambitious and valuable people are the ones who can pay back their loans.