Private student loans can now be discharged in bankruptcy
foxbusiness.com
foxbusiness.com
Case decision: https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/02bd25d5-26...
"In previous bankruptcy cases, it was unclear whether private student loans were dischargeable loans — until July 2021, when a federal court ruled that private student loans are not considered qualified higher education expenses under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code."
Now if we can only do the same for government student loans.
This article was pretty ridiculous and tone deaf, warning that people who are thinking about bankruptcy that they will have to sell their vacation homes.
Lenders might now have to consider earning potential of underwater basked weaving degree-holders before loaning out $200k for them to get PhDs in it!
Student loans being generally dischargeable in bankruptcy would change lending practices, but what would change is that lenders would require the loan to be either cosigned by someone with an acceptable risk profile, or the loan would need to be backed by some type of collateral that could be collected in the event of a default. Given that private student loans often tend to be in the five or six digit range, the practical result of this type of change would be a significant portion of the population simply being unable to obtain them and being priced out of an education.
This could arguably be a positive development if it forces educational institutions to keep their prices in check or risk pricing out most of their students. However, the idea that lenders would keep funding students attending engineering programs but not art programs (or whatever your vision was) is pure fantasy.
Your point about putting pressure on prices is what I would call ideal: anything that could help rein in spending and deliver value is better than what we have now.
Being priced out of a credential you mean. If you could not afford to pay your student loans back but were stuck in indentured servitude as a result of signing the paperwork, you were priced out anyway, you just didn't know it and you had no way out. Now you do. Also you can learn basically anything online for free now. You don't pay for an education, you pay for a degree.
This will absolutely prevent the ridiculous cost of college from going up and it might go down. I expected several universities to downsize significantly as a result of this, and lots of reform in tenure, and less jobs will be able to demand credentials that their applicants don't actually need and degrees will be more fairly compensated. All in all this will be an amazing normalizing force for the job market, higher education and people in general.