Undo Undue Hardship: An Objective Approach to Discharging Federal Students Loans in Bankruptcy

A debtor seeking to discharge student loans in bankruptcy must prove that paying the debt would cause an undue hardship upon him and his dependents. Undue hardship, however, is an undefined concept, flummoxing debtors, creditors and judges alike. The result of this ambiguity is rampant inconsistency in the manners in which similarly-situated debtors (and creditors) are treated by the courts. This article argues that the undue hardship standard should be replaced by a framework that uses debt service thresholds to determine the propriety of federal student loan bankruptcy discharges. Eligibility for discharge would depend on outstanding loan amounts, debtor income history, federal poverty guidelines, and the type of academic program in which the loan was incurred. The goals of the framework would be two-fold: 1) to provide an impartial, economical, and uniform means of assessing the propriety of student loan discharges, and 2) to provide debtors facing crushing student loan debt and few prospects for repaying it with a simplified avenue of relief in bankruptcy

Your Results May Vary : Protecting Students and Taxpayers Through Tighter Regulation of Proprietary School Representations

This article argues for stricter regulation of proprietary (for-profit) school advertising and recruitment practices and proffers specific proposals for effectuating this regulation. Proprietary schools play an important role in broadening access to higher education. They enroll a large number of students who are underserved by traditional, non-profit institutions. These students tend to be poorer, less educated, and older than students at traditional schools, and they tend to undertake higher education for very practical reasons. These characteristics make them particularly susceptible to deceptive marketing and unfounded promises of higher education providers. Unfortunately, some proprietary schools exploit the susceptibilities of their target markets by making misrepresentations when marketing their programs and recruiting students. These unscrupulous behaviors contribute to low completion rates and high loan default rates among proprietaryschool students — outcomes that cost students and taxpayers billions of dollars. Therefore, tighter regulationof proprietary school marketing and recruitment practices is needed

Reimaging Merit as Achievement

Higher education plays a central role in the apportionment of opportunities within the American meritocracy. Unfortunately, narrow conceptions of merit limit the extent to which higher education broadens racial and socioeconomic opportunity. This article proposes an admissions framework that transcends these limited notions of merit. This “Achievement Framework” would reward applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds who have achieved beyond what could have reasonably been expected. Neither race nor ethnicity is considered as part of the framework; however, its nuanced and contextual structure would ensure that racial and ethnic diversity is encouraged in ways that traditional class-conscious preferences do not. The overarching goal of the framework is to help loosen the “Gordian knot” binding race to class by ensuring that higher education opportunities are apportioned in true meritocratic fashion

The Marginalization of Black Aspiring Lawyers

This paper argues that Black people who aspire to be lawyers endure marginalized existences, which span the law school admission process through the matriculation process and into the law school classroom. The manner in which the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) drives the vetting of law school applications ensures that Black applicants face steep disadvantages in gaining admission. In the 2016-17 admission cycle, it took about 1,960 Black applicants to yield 1,000 offers of admission, compared to only 1,204 among White applicants and 1,333 overall.2 These trends are explained in large part by racial and ethnic disparities in average LSAT scores. The average score for Black test-takers is 142—11 points lower than the average for White and Asian test-takers of 153.3 Therefore, for large proportions of Black law school applicants—49 percent in 2016-17—their marginalization in the admission process ends in outright exclusion

Diversity as a Law School Survival Strategy

Over the past few years, law schools have been dealing with a drastic and, so far, unyielding decline in student interest. Between 2010 and 2013, student enrollments fell almost 25%, to levels not seen in 40 years. This trend has prompted many to wonder what schools have done, and what they can do, to ensure their survivalin this new climate. This article explores the extent to which law schools have used students of color, particularly black and Hispanic students, to bolster enrollments and lessen the effects of the downturn. The results of this analysis suggest that a school’s median LSAT score influenced the extent to which the racial composition of its entering classes changed between 2010 and 2013. Black and Hispanic students were critical components of the enrollment management calculus for private law schools with the lowest median LSAT scores. Higher-median schools tended to rely more heavily on white and Asian enrollments to stem declines. These trends led to increased racial and ethnic stratification in law school enrollments, where black and Hispanic students were more likely to attend schools with lower median LSAT scores in 2013 than in 2010, while white and Asian students were more likely to attend schools with higher median scores. Perceptions of law school quality and prestige are greatly influenced by a school’s median LSAT score; therefore, the trend of stratification may only serve to intensify racial and ethnic differences in career paths and trajectories

Oh, What a Relief It (Sometimes) Is: An Analysis of Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Petitions to Discharge Student Loans

Conventional wisdom dictates that it is all-but-impossible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. This contention, however, misstates the fact that bankruptcy discharge of student loans is possible—and it happens. This Article presents a statistical analysis of what happened when Chapter 7 bankruptcy petitioners in the First and Third federal judicial circuits filed 523(a)(8) adversary proceedings—or proceedings to discharge their student loan debt due to an “undue hardship.” In our analysis, we found undue hardship discharge rates of 54% in the First Circuit and 24% in the Third Circuit. But more significantly, we found that undue hardship determinations were relatively rare. A plurality of cases was dismissed at the debtors’ behest. The next most common resolution was settlements between debtors and creditors. And when all forms of resolution were considered, 51% of First Circuit debtors and 46% of Third Circuit debtors who sought discharge of their student loans obtained some form of relief—either an undue hardship discharge, a settlement, or a default judgment. These rates, while not representing certainty, surely do not reflect the near-impossibility of relief that is often assumed when student loans are discussed in the context of bankruptcy