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Friday, July 17, 2009
Law - "Bankruptcy Won't Discharge $350,000 of Student Loan Debt for Law Graduate"
The ILB mentioned the case of Mark Jesperson in an entry earlier this week on the high cost of traditional law school.
Today Above the Law has an entry focusing on the bankruptcy law aspects of the case. It concludes:
Big banks are too big to fail. Mark Jesperson is too small to save.The government says that making student loans nearly impossible to discharge during bankruptcy encourages lenders to make loans to students. Jesperson had a different perspective
"The system's set up as such that most people -- people like myself -- cannot complete a professional degree without the help of student loans," Jesperson said. "Then, even if that profession doesn't work, even if things go wrong, there's no way out."Jesperson isn't working as a lawyer. He's a painter who lives in a trailer. How is he going to pay off $350,000? Well, he probably won't, not in this lifetime. But it is nice that the 8th Circuit has made the point that if you seek post-graduate education and things don't work out, you will be punished to the full extent of the law for the rest of your natural days.Education might be the "silver bullet," for upward mobility in American society. But something is very wrong when the gun is trained on the very students seeking to better themselves.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 17, 2009 10:33 AM
Posted to General Law Related