Since AP credits are essentially “skipping a grade”, I dont know that I’d expect more than 4-7% to be capable of meeting the requirements. It’s a bit disingenuous to expect more high school kids to successfully complete college level work.
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I presume things are different that when I went, but there were lots of people able to skip (get credit for) 100 (freshman) series courses. There were two catches involved. First, you only got the credit after passing the next series course (French 201, etc.) Second, you were only given a “pass” grade (2.0 pts). Thus, you’d never get grade based awards, and possibly lose grade based scholarships.
To me, they were well worth it.
Yeah, I tried to argue, many decades ago, that I wasn’t interested in anything other than Cobol and Fortran, and that I shouldn’t have to waste my limited brainpower and limited time on other junk. I was given the “well-rounded” argument from everyone, including my parents, former teachers, employers and former employers. I didn’t buy it then, but I did buy it a decade later, and to this day.
If all you want is to focus on one subject, maybe look at a for profit school. I believe one of the selling points of these schools is “don’t study what you don’t care about (or want to know).” For example Devry, I think, was a school in the 70’s and 80’s that focused on IT. As well, there were lots of “business” colleges that attracted young ladies who were interested in secretarial and administrative work. These schools weren’t necessarily cheaper per hour than universities, but they allowed you to take “only” courses in your program.
ETA: In today’s world of 140 character communiques, the well-rounded argument is probably a joke.
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But that’s a bit at odds with the fact that high-schoolers in other countries are able to follow a more demanding curriculum in high-school and get a bachelor equivalent in 3 years. I came to a US graduate university after 3 years of college abroad, had no trouble passing the GRE requirements, and graduated with Ph.D fine despite English being my third language (after my mother tongue and mandatory Russian). I just never had to take well-roundedness classes I had no interest in and I cannot see how that hurt my career. So it’s a bit hard for me to see the point in paying high prices for courses I view as having very low ROI.
A lot of these for-profits have a poor reputation in terms of leading to better careers. To be fair I have no investigated them thoroughly and maybe some are worth it depending on field of studies. But are they really much cheaper than say in-state public schools and are the degrees actually recognized on equal footing as Bachelors? Secondly, they seem to be hit or miss on subjects you can focus on. Definitely not as much coverage of majors as regular colleges.
Prominent loan forgiveness case in bankruptcy overturned.
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So how much has this Brunner test contributed to the so-called student loan “crisis”? When students realize their degree isnt going to be worth the cost, if they bail partway through they’re stuck repaying the debt, while if they take out a few more large loans before quitting then it’ll become a burdon that’s dischargable.
I assume it’s more “deer in headlights” inertia than it is a calculated move. But with all the “experts” at skirting evictions and dodging credit card collections, there’s got to be a significant volume of gaming student loan debt, too. It’s like using the rent money to buy lotto tickets, in the hopes that you’ll eventually score and be able to pay off the back rent - only in this case, even if you never end up scoring, you dig a hole deep enough that you can now wipe it away anyways.
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It’s very strict, as it had always been applied before some progressive judge used it to make a political statement. It’s been super hard to discharge student loans, which is why rates on them are low. The higher judge disagreed with this lax Bruner ruling, restoring the more typical outcome.
If they do shift to a lenient Bruner interpretation, it screws existing lenders with a wave of defaults and then screws all future student borrowers as interest rates charged are raised significantly to compensate.
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That rule needs work especially better guidelines so that it’s applied consistently across Circuits so that you don’t have wildly varying standards and discharge rates.
So to game the system, maybe the best avenue is to relocate to a location with a favorable Circuit jurisdiction. Personally I don’t think it’d be fair to move the goalposts. Undue hardship standard should be the one prevalent when people took out the loans. That’d ensure lenders are not left to hold the bag in a bait and switch move if the rule is interpreted with more leniency.
That said, I don’t think the rule should be changed by itself either. Base costs, terms, and loan eligibility have to be fixed first. Otherwise, lenders are just gonna pass on the higher default costs by charging higher interest rates making college even less affordable for those who actually repay the loans.
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As luck would have it since I posted OP, I will begin working in govt, in public health next year.
Time for me to figure out how to move my FFEL loans to Direct. Everytime I call UHEAA they say you must have unconsolidated loans to do that, can’t move it 
It’s about 100K and chances are in 10 yrs of IBR it will be repaid anyways. I would like the backstop though…
Not looking at BK type forgiveness, more service based options.
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Once I was rejected, I never bothered to follow up when they “relaxed” some of the rules to allow people that should have qualified to qualify. This article shows that it would NOT have been worth my time to follow up and re-apply. Essentially, I finished paying off my loan completely (it was a 15 year loan and I had paid 2 years before entering public service) before they would have eventually recognized my forgiveness.
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Here i thought Congress was in charge of federal money.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION CONSIDERS EXTENDING PAYMENT PAUSE FOR STUDENT LOAN BORROWERS - CNBC
The end of Jan deadline was coming up, so it’s time to extend until we get to midterms and promise it will be wiped out if you Vote Correctly.
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Vote for Brandon!
j/k but this might be a reason for me to make the leap to Direct Loans and pay the 2% more interest on my 100K
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Extended til May, one step at a time.
Under the action, interest rates will remain at 0% until the moratorium ends, and debt collection efforts will be suspended, according to NBC Washington .
“We know that millions of student loan borrowers are still coping with the impacts of the pandemic and need some more time before resuming payments ,” said Biden
Meanwhile, they’re looking hard for excuses to just cancel everything but haven’t quite found the ones they want to use for that, yet.
Biden has questioned whether he has the authority for that kind of mass cancellation, and legal scholars differ on that. Earlier this year, Biden asked the Education and Justice departments to study the issue. Officials have said that work is still underway.
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and so it begins…
So they’re rewarding white deadbeat students, but letting poor, disenfranchised, hard working, people of color and brown immigrants get kicked out of their homes in winter and at Christmas. What kind of ism is that called?
Ain’t it the truth!
I’m going to admit that the idea of paying off a personal schooling loan is something I have never agreed on. Main problem is that it’s not fair for most people who managed to pay that debt off one way or another.
Now if the government wants to reimburse all the people that paid their previous debts, I could go along with the idea. 
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I’m not following what’s the excuse for extending the payment pause. Unemployment is very low among college grads, economy seems very close to back fully, employers are fighting hard to get the few graduates that are still looking for a job leading to increasing paychecks. Seems like perfect conditions for graduates to pay what they owe, no?
But why stop there? DH and I are fully employed, made a healthy amount in market returns this year, just got large bonus and raise, + insert inane leap of logic here => that obviously sounds like the perfect time to pause my income tax payments!
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Now that’s a solution. Suspend income taxes, so that those with student loans can afford to make those payments.
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Educational debate on college versus more trade oriented training for many people. Not everyone is college material and benefits from paying for it, but the politicians seem to be trying to force everyone to move that way. Certainly the colleges are happy for the extra money, loan subsidies, grants etc.
(you can read the transcript off the video if you prefer)
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The agitators against loan repayment continue.
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I think the facts speak for themselves on the issue of that memo:
- It was never officially released even in its heavily-redacted form. My reading on this is that they did not want it part of the official record. Not a great show of confidence in its findings.
- What was relased was heavily-redacted to start with. This strikes me as odd because I wouldn’t anticipate it to be redacted usually. No need to protect specific names, details about operations of the government, etc like you would see in security documents and confidential reports. So based on the subject matter, it seems to me like the redaction was just needed to remove what does not fit the desired narrative.
- The final version has not been released. Officially the matter is still under review from April 2021. I know the government moves slow but if it was a campaign promise and a priority, I’d imagine this would get a bit higher priority. Outside of understaffing and incompetence - not ruling these out but it’s worse if that’s the reason for the delay. That delay makes me think the issue is far from a slam dunk so they need more time to find loopholes in the findings.
My conclusion is that the preliminary findings show that Biden actually does not have the unilateral authority to cancel the student debt he promised to cancel and/or they know it’s going to be so controversial that it’ll void even the remote chances the Dems still have for the mid-terms. So in practice, the matter is tabled but they’ll never admit that it is because of the optics.
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