I can try based on what I know and what I've experienced but an accountant or bankruptcy lawyer could do better.

The Federal government is the largest lender of student loans in the country. It's supposed to get people who otherwise couldn't get into school afford to do so with low interest loans. When I started school 10-15 years ago there were also a bunch of private banks throwing money at students with private loans that were in some cases easier to get and had fewer restrictions on what you could do with the money. As far as I can tell this was because in the late nineties Congress amended bankruptcy rules so that student debt cannot be discharged through bankruptcy protection. So Discover, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and the lot will give you $10,000 that you can use for housing, living expenses, a car payment at a low rate, but not as low as the government. It seems most of them hopped off this gravy train after the recession hit as private loans seem to be harder to get. I looked when I thought about going back to school.

So that's fucked up that this bill for upwards of six figures can follow you around forever even after a court declares you insolvent but another issue here is the emphasis on going to college for every kid exiting high school. We have a shitload of colleges and universities that are not selective about their students and some argue exist only to milk them out of this loan money. We even have colleges that are for-profit institutions where they don't even try very hard not to admit they are companies driven by profit. The Obama administration just tried to put the crackdown on them but I'm not following the story so I don't know what they did.

I kinda veered off there, I'm not saying going to college is a bad idea, but the way we pay for it here is messed up and a whole generation is walking around with $20,000, $40,000, $80,000, $100,000 dollars in debt before they even begin their career and the government is making a profit off this. You can get on the moral high horse about making a bad decision and living with the consequences, or working hard or picking a practical major but the message for a long time was "you just need a college degree, it doesn't matter in what," and 18 year-olds aren't exactly financial gurus so setting yourself up to be in the hole every month for 10-30 years isn't a problem many of them consider. Myself at that age included.

There's the forgiveness option I mentioned, 25 or 30 years of on time payment of the minimum and the remaining balance is discharged for federal loans. There are some public service forgiveness options if you become a teacher. The debt can be discharged entirely but it's ridiculously hard to do. You have to A) die or B) prove that you are so disabled that you will never be able to make enough money to pay anything on your loan. A bankruptcy attorney told me about a case where a single mother who was disabled and in poverty couldn't have her loans discharged because she couldn't satisfactorily prove that at some point in the future she won't be unable to make payments.