Bankruptcy and Student Debt

So as I was eating my oatmeal this morning, I was reading online about student loans, which got me thinking about bankruptcy for people with outstanding student loans.

At present, when people can't pay back their student loans and begin to default, the creditor (bank) can eventually go to court, seek a claim, and try take that person's money and stuff - just like any other unsecured loan. The trick is that when that person also can't pay their credit card, home mortgage, car payments and student loans, they'll often file for bankruptcy.

While there's a couple different ways to do this, when they do, everything but the student loans can be discharged, wiped clean, and gone forever - though their credit rating will be in the tubes for several years. For student loans, there has to be an "undue hardship" preventing the repayment of the loan.

What is considered an undue hardship? Its up to the judge, however, earning $10/hr when you owe $140,000 in loans probably doesn't qualify. Probably.

So why all this backstory? Here's the thing: I feel for these people that get themselves into this situation. I think they had hopes and dreams that somehow got off track. But it's still their fault for taking out loans they couldn't pay back. Who know who else's fault it is? The schools, who took the money from these kids yet didn't prepare them adequately for a job.

There's been some talk lately of lowering the standard for forgiving student debt to something easier than "undue hardship." I have an idea (and this is the reason for this post) - How about we not allow any discharge of student debt for the first 15-20 years after the loan is made. That'll give the person who took the loan time to work and pay it off.

After that set time, let's assign some of the debt (1/2?) to the school that took the money. I think they're just as at fault. This would probably lead to further raising of tuition, and continue escalating until crappy schools go out of business - and I think that would be good for everyone.

I'm sure there are flaws to this idea - I haven't been thinking about this for very long. But, I do think that the schools are often as much at fault as the dumb students that can't balance their budgets, and should bear more of the responsibility.