[RougeFemme]

But credit card debt can be discharged; why not student loan debt? The inability to discharge it is relatively recent, I believe - a compromise reached when the private banks were pulled out of the federal student loan loop. Also, if they could only be discharged during bankruptcy - as was the case before - there would be no concern about it becoming a rite of passage.

[7Figures2Commas]

The official overall unemployment rate for recent college graduates has been as high as 9.4% in the past three years. There is still significant underemployment, and many employed college graduates are in roles that don't even require college degrees. Most of the post-2008 college graduates who are fortunate enough to be employed are projected to have lower earnings than their pre-Great Recession counterparts.

As I noted in another comment, one in five federal student loans outstanding is already in default or delayed default, and that number does obviously not include the number of loans that are in deferral still accumulating interest. Put simply, there are a lot of people out there who likely could and would consider filing for bankruptcy if it allowed them to discharge this debt.

We can't have it both ways: if you want everybody who wants a college education to be able to obtain one, the federal government has to be in the lending business and it has to be all but impossible for borrowers to discharge their debt.