Bankruptcy won't discharge student loans anymore. For most PhD students, the only ways out are paying them off, using service-based repayment programs, or dying with the debt. Some careers can accelerate repayment, but the trap is real.
Declaring bankruptcy is an incredibly difficult route to get out of student loans. I have a friend who, for a lot of reasons, accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans and was planning on declaring bankruptcy to try to get out of his student loans. And then years ago, they got rid of the— said, "No, you can't declare bankruptcy to get out of student loans." So he's had a long process. There's basically two ways out of student loans: pay them off or die. Those are the two approaches. There are some careers you go into where they'll start to to pay down your student loans or they'll be eliminated faster. But ultimately it's pay them off either with money or service or die. Dying may not be a great incentive just to get rid of student loans, but it is an option there. There are many people who say, I'm just going to die with student loans. I'm not going to be able to pay them off because I had to take so many loans. Just be aware of that. Join our free dissertation help community and we'll provide as much support as possible.
