Forget the Russians: Democrats should focus their energy on removing Betsy DeVos from Trump's Cabinet

Almost 44 million Americans are student-loan debtors, and every single one of them should see Betsy DeVos as their mortal enemy. Since President Trump appointed her as Secretary of Education, DeVos has done nothing to ease the suffering of college borrowers. On the contrary, she has done everything she can to prop up the venal and corrupt for-profit college industry, which has preyed on vulnerable and naive students, many of them minority members or just plain poor.

We have known for years that the for-profit college racket is a cancer. Senator Tom Harkin's 2012 report on the for-profits made that fact absolutely clear. And we know that a high percentage of people who take out student loans to attend these shyster colleges default on their loans. Nearly half of a recent cohort of borrowers who attended for-profit colleges defaulted within five years. It was recently reported that more than half of the students who took out student loans to attend 1,000 colleges and schools had not paid down one dime of their student loans seven years into repayment. Most of those 1,000 institutions are for-profits.

Minorities have been especially injured by the for-profit colleges. Three quarters of African Americans who take out loans to study at a for-profit college and then drop out eventually default.

In my view, the Obama administration did not do a great job of reining in the for-profit racketeers, but it did make an effort. The combined efforts of the Obama Department of Education and several state attorney generals brought down two bad actors: Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech. These two organizations had a total of a half million students and former students at the time they closed and filed for bankruptcy.

And the Obama administration put regulations in place to process students' fraud claims--claims against Corinthian in particular. But Betsy DeVos derailed those regulations and appears intent on protecting the for-profits from fraud claims. She's cooked up a bogus formula for resolving fraud claims, awarding only partial compensation to victims.

As Steve Rhode noted in a recent essay, the DeVos DOE has not provided relief to a single student borrower who was defrauded by a for-profit college, although it has approved around 13,000 claims by former Corinthian students (while rejecting 8,600 pending  claims).

DeVos also nullified an Obama-era regulation that would prohibit the for-profits from forcing their students to sign covenants not to sue as a condition of enrollment.  In addition, DeVos is slow rolling the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF), which provides debt relief to people who devote ten years to public service. Indeed, the Trump administration proposes to do away with the PSLF program.

And if that weren't enough, the Republicans sent a bill out of the House Education Committee that would do away with student-loan forgiveness altogether. DeVos has not formally endorsed this bill, but she called it a "starting point."  The bill, if it becomes law, would give student borrowers only two options--pay off their loans in ten years or go into a perpetual income-based program that would not end until the loans are paid off or the student borrower dies. Oh yes, and the bill would eliminate the authority of state attorney generals to police the student loan industry.

And what have the Democrats done in response to DeVos' shockingly obsequious behavior toward the for-profit college racketeers? Not a friggin' thing. Senator Elizabeth Warren--self-proclaimed consumer advocate, writes stern letters to DeVos and other government bureaucrats, but she can't point to a single accomplishment in terms of student-loan relief.

I give the Democrats grudging credit for at least introducing legislation that addresses the student-loan crisis. The Delaney-Katko bill (co-sponsored by 25 Democrats and one Republican) would open the bankruptcy courts to deserving student borrowers, which is really the only comprehensive solution to the crisis. But that bill will never make through a Republican dominated Congress that is totally beholden to the financial industry.

In my mind, the litmus test for Congress in terms of student-loan relief is the Warren-McCaskill bill that would bar the federal government from garnishing the Social Security checks of elderly student-loan defaulters. Passing this bill would at least alleviate the suffering of the 114,000 older Americans who are seeing their Social Security income reduced due to unpaid student loans.

 It is not enough for Senators Warren and McCaskill to simply file this bill; they need to get it to a vote. What Republican would vote against that bill? Can't Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Pelosi walk across the aisle and get Warren-McCaskill bill signed into law with bipartisan support?

Frankly, if there is not enough good will between Republicans and Democrats to enact the Warren-McCaskill Social Security relief bill, which only provides puny student-debt relief, then student debtors should say the hell with both parties and form a third political party.

In the meantime, Democrats should focus on getting Betsy DeVos out of Trump's cabinet. I don't know if her slavish catering to the for-profit-college gang amounts to high crimes and misdemeanors for impeachment purposes, but this I know: Betsy has got to go.

Image credit: GQ Magazine

References

Douglas Belkin, Josh Mitchell, & Melissa Korn. House GOP to Propose Sweeping Changes to Higher Education. Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2017.

Jillian Berman. House Republicans seek to roll back state laws protecting student loan borrowers. Marketwatch.com, December 7, 2017.

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel. GOP higher ed plan would end student loan forgiveness in repayment program, overhaul federal financial aid. Washington Post, December 1, 2017.

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel. Dems raise concern about possible links betwen DeVos and student debt collection agency. Washington Post, January 17, 2017.

Steve Rhode. GOP Proposed Change to Higher Education Act to Gut Consumers and Debt Relief Companies. Get Out of Debt Guy, December 5, 2017.

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel. Elizabeth Warren wants the Education Dept.'s use of earnings data investigated. Washington Post, January 2, 2018.

Paul Fain. Half of black student loan borrowers default, new federal data show. Inside Higher Ed, October 17, 2017.

Andrea Fuller. Student Debt Payback Far Worse Than Believed. Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2017. 

Andrew Kreighbaum. DeVos on Higher Education Act Rewrite. Inside Higher Ed, December 15, 2017.

Jack Moore. Betsy DeVos may be Gearing Up to Screw Over Public Service Workers Who Expect Student Loan Forgiveness. GQ.com, August 3, 2017.

Representative John Delaney press release. Delaney and Katko File Legislation to Help Americans Struggling with Student Loan Debt, May 5, 2017.

Senator Claire McCaskill Press Release, December 20, 2016. McCaskill-Warren GAO Report Shows Shocking Increase in Student Loan Debt Among Seniors.

Senator Elizabeth Warren Press Release, December 20, 2016. McCaskill-Warren GAO Report Shows Shocking Increase in Student Loan Debt Among Seniors. 

Steve Rhode. Dept of Ed Puts Fraud First Over Students and Common Sense. Getoutofdebtguy.com, January 3, 2017.

United States Government Accountability Office. Social Security Offsets: Improvement to Program Design Could Better Assist Older Student Borrowers with Obtaining Permitted Relief. Washington DC: Author, December 2016).

United States Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success. July 2012. Accessible at: http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/for_profit_report/PartI.pdf

James Howard Kunstler's negative assessment of American higher education is spot on

James Howard Kunstler posted an essay a few days ago containing his predictions for American higher education in the coming year. He predicts big trouble.

As Kunstler correctly observed, "college has become, most of all, a money-grubbing racket tuned to the flow of exorbitant student loans for exorbitant college costs."  In other words, as he has said before, higher education in the United States basically operates from a "criminal ethic" where costs have "developed an inverse relationship to the value of a college education."

Kunstler's essay also includes a withering assessment of college leadership: "The presidents, deans, and faculty of colleges around the country have turned into the most obdurate enemies of free thought since the Spanish Inquisition, a gang of cowards and villains who disgrace the meaning and purpose of higher ed[ucation]."

In fact, Kunstler's indictment of the people who run American colleges is too gentle. If these clowns lived in another age, they would be the people who staffed the French Vichy regime during Word War II--the bureaucrats who dutifully rounded up French Jews for the Nazis and shipped them from Paris to the German death camps. No courage, no intellect, no sense of decency whatsoever. They babble ceaselessly about trigger words, safe spaces and "white male heterosexual privilege" while they pick their students' pockets.

The federal student loan program is quietly and inexorably destroying the lives of millions of Americans; has anyone in higher education spoken up? Have the presidents of Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, Brown, Johns Hopkins, or the University of Michigan uttered a single word of criticism about it? Has any university leader endorsed bankruptcy relief for overburdened student debtors?  Has any college president or dean criticized the government policy of garnishing Social Security checks of elderly student-loan defaulters? Has any higher-education leader of national standing called for the closure of the for-profit college industry?

No, our elite colleges and universities are almost as addicted to federal student-aid money as the sleaziest for-profit schools. In terms of dependency on federal money, there is not a dime's worth of difference between Harvard and Bob's Beauty Academy.

Kunstler predicts that "a shocking number of small four-year colleges will go out of business this year," and I share his view. Harvard professor Clayton Christensen said recently that half of American colleges will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years.

In fact, the small liberal arts college is dead, although the leaders of some small colleges stubbornly keep their institutions on life support. Parents need to warn their children to stay away from these decaying institutions. It would be a grave mistake to borrow $100,000 to get a degree from a college that will close before its graduates pay off their student loans.

French officials registering French Jews.

References

Abigail Hess. Harvard Business School professor: Half of American colleges will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years. CNBC.com, November 15, 2017.

James Howard Kunstler. Forecast 2018--What Could Go Wrong? Clusterfuck Nation, January 1, 2018.

James Howard Kunstler. Made for Each Other. Clusterfuck Nation, February 13, 2017.

Betsy DeVos says students defrauded by for-profit colleges may only get partial debt relief

As Martin Luther King wrote from the Birmingham Jail, justice too long delayed is justice denied. And of course justice that is not only delayed but incomplete is nothing more than a cynical parody of justice.

As everyone knows, hundreds of thousands of students took out student loans to attend for-profit colleges and paid too much for their educational experiences. Often they got no benefit from their studies. Student-default rates for these students are shocking. Almost 50 percent in a recent cohort defaulted within five years of beginning repayment. Three out of four African Americans who attended for-profit schools eventually default--which is a scandal.

And many students were defrauded by the for-profit colleges they attended. Last year, Corinthian Colleges had a judgment entered against it in California for more than a billion dollars based on findings of fraud and misrepresentation.

The Obama administration, to its credit, crafted regulations whereby students could apply to the Department of Education to have their student loans forgiven if they were defrauded by the college they attended. Thousands of students who were enrolled at one of the Corinthian campuses applied for loan forgiveness based on fraud claims.

Betsy DeVos stopped the implementation of the Obama regulations, saying she feared students would get "free money." She then appointed a panel of experts to draft new regulations, which won't be approved until next year. In fact, under the DeVos scheme, defrauded students will not be able to move forward on their claims until 2019 at the earliest.

And it appears, many students will not get complete relief from their loans even if they can prove they were defrauded.  DeVos is talking about giving partial relief based on a formula that will compare the defrauded student's earnings to the average earnings among people who participated in similar educational programs.

The cynicism of this approach is shocking. First of all, by delaying the administrative process until 2019, DeVos is giving fraud students only three options for handling their student debt. First, they can continue making loan payments on educational experiences that are worthless. Second, they can enter income-based repayment plans that will set monthly payments so low that the interest on their debt will continue to accrue, making their total indebtedness grow larger. Or third, they can default on their loans, which will ruin their credit and cause their debt to grow larger from fees and penalties that the debt collectors tack on to their original debt.

DeVos's tactic is nothing more than cynical manipulation to aid the for-profit industry. If Congress had a moral compass and some courage, DeVos's behavior would lead to a formal resolution calling for her resignation.

Betsy DeVos' summer home

References

Gail Collins. No Profit in Betsy DeVos. New York Times, October 27, 2017.

Maria Danilova. DeVos may only partially wipe away some student loans. Detroit News, October 28, 2017.

Andrew Kreighbaum. Education Department sets up standards for partial relief of defrauded borrowers. Inside Higher Ed, December 21, 2017.

Tamar Lewin. Questions Follow Leader of For-Profit Colleges. New York Times,May 26, 2011.

Bob Samuels. The For-Profit College Bubble: Exploiting the Poor to Give to the Rich. Huffington Post, May 25, 2011.

An anti-hazing foundation? Fraternity hazing will stop when hazers go to prison

Last August, Stephen and Rae Ann Gruver, a Georgia couple, sent their son Maxwell to LSU, where he pledged Phi Delta Theta fraternity. One month later, Max was dead, killed in a hazing episode. He had been forced to drink 190 proof alcohol in a fraternity exercise cynically titled "Bible study."

According to the coroner, Max had massive amounts of alcohol in his system at the time of his death--more than six times the legal limit. Experts said he asphyxiated in his own vomit but probably died painlessly because he was unconscious when he passed away.

Max's parents did what many parents do when they lose a child to a a senseless death; they threw themselves into a heroic effort to prevent others from dying the way their son did. In Max's honor, the Gruvers started an anti-hazing foundation, dedicated to raising public awareness about college hazing. They also distributed 30,000 silicon wristbands that say "Stop the Hazing."

In addition, the Gruvers endorsed a law that will grant "medical amnesty" to anyone who reports acute alcohol poisoning as a medical emergency. And they are calling for more transparency about fraternity hazing. If they had known about Phi Delta Theta's history of hazing, the Gruvers say, they never would have allowed Max to pledge that group.

LSU officials publicly support the Gruvers' efforts. I'm sure they were particularly pleased to hear the Gruvers' call for more transparency because "transparency" is a word college administrators dearly love. It rolls over the tongue so smoothly, like a single-malt scotch. And when college administrators use that word--and they use it often--they are never telling the truth.

Already, LSU is equivocating about some of the Gruvers' demands. Ernie Ballard, a school spokesperson, pointed out the problems with amnesty. "Every university struggles with the balance of amnesty and penalties," Ballard explained. If too many conditions are attached to amnesty, students discount its value. On the other hand, "if the amnesty is too broad, habitual offenders may not be held accountable."

LSU president F. King Alexander and Governor John Bel Edwards are talking about tougher penalties for fraternity hazing. But they are "concerned" that tougher sanctions might deter students from reporting bad behavior.

Apparently then, hazing is a conundrum--requiring long and tedious deliberation.

But here is the truth about fraternity hazing. More than forty states already have anti-hazing statutes, some of them dating back more than half a century. And many of these statutes contain amnesty or immunity provisions.

And the Clery Act, passed more than 25 years ago, requires all colleges and universities to file annual reports of criminal activity, including assaults, as a condition of receiving federal funds. The Clery Act was put in place to ensure transparency on college campuses--the very thing the Gruvers are demanding.

Nevertheless, in spite of anti-hazing statutes and the Clery Act, four college students died this year from hazing or criminally negligent drinking episodes.

Hazing won't stop on college campuses until the hazers are sent to prison. If one LSU fraternity boy were sent to Angola State Prison for pouring 190 proof alcohol down some poor kid's throat, LSU would have a lot less hazing.

And hazing won't stop until the universities are held liable for damages when hazing occurs. LSU has anti-hazing policies on its books, and it is willing to deliver a slap on the wrist to fraternities when hazing is discovered. But how much more serious would LSU be about hazing if the Gruvers obtained a quarter-of-a-billion dollar judgment against it?  A lot more serious, I warrant.

The Gruver tragedy will soon be forgotten. A few months from now, the local district attorney will conclude he has more important things to do than prosecute college boys for hazing. A deal will be struck of some kind, and no one will go to jail. LSU or some of its wealthy supporters will make a generous donation to the Max Gruver Foundation, and the Gruvers won't sue.

And next year, or two or three years from now, another college boy will die in his own vomit at a fraternity hazing exercise.  And then we will hear another call for more transparency.

Angola State Prison, where LSU hazers belong

References

Rebekah Allen. 'He would have done great things with his life.' 2017.The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, December 30, 2017.

Rebekah Allen, Grace Toohey, and Emma Discher. 10 booked in LSU fraternity hazing death case. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, October 12, 2017, p. 1.

Lela Skene. LSU fraternity pledge Maxwell Gruver's 'off the charts' blood-alcohol level shocks experts. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, October 11, 2017.

Student-loan debtors beware: Congressman Tom Garrett wants your Social Security check

Congress must think Americans are fools, and perhaps we are.

Earlier this month, the Republicans rammed through their so-called "tax reform" bill that will give middle-class families about ten bucks a week in tax relief. Meanwhile, Congress left the notorious carried interest rule in place--the rule that allows hedge fund managers to pay federal taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.

If Americans are stupid enough to swallow the tax-reform caper, maybe they can be swindled out of their Social Security earnings. Representative Tom Garrett, a Republican congressman from Virginia, thinks its worth a try. Garrett introduced a bill he calls the Student Security Act, whereby college borrowers can surrender some of their Social Security earnings in return for student-loan forgiveness.

Here's how it works, in Congressman Garrett's own words:

For every $550 in student loan forgiveness . . . a Student Security participant would agree to raise his or her full-retirement age for Social Security benefits by one month. A student could get a maximum of $40,150 in debt relief. To get that, the person would delay the starting age for collecting Social Security benefits by 6 years and one month.

Most people need their Social Security income in order to retire, so essentially Representative Garrett is asking people to postpone their retirement by six years in return for some student-loan debt relief.

Of course the whole premise of the federal student loan program is the notion that a college degree is the ticket to a middle-class lifestyle and that borrowing money to get a college education is a good investment. Obviously, that premise is false for millions of people, including people who would postpone their retirement by six years just to get clear of their student loans.

Congressman Tom Garrett wants your Social Security check.

References

Tom Garrett. Let's allow our kids to use some of their future Social Security earnings to pay off their student loans. foxnews.com, December 29, 2017. 

No Exit: Graduates of bottom-tier law schools have mountains of student-loan debt and little prospect of ever paying it off

You say you went to law school to pursue a better life. Your LSAT scores weren't so hot, so you were turned down by the top law schools. Harvard and Yale tossed out your application with its other junk mail and sent you an elegant rejection letter, complete with a genuine-looking robo-signature from someone in the admissions office.

But a lower-tier law school welcomed you with open arms. Let's say it's a for-profit school like Arizona Summit or Florida Coastal. Or maybe a nonprofit, private law school like Thomas M. Cooley in Michigan, Thomas Jefferson in San Diego, or McGeorge in Sacramento. Or maybe you received an acceptance letter from a bottom-rung public law school like Southern Illinois or Texas Southern.

And so you went to law school. You were vaguely aware that job prospects for people who graduate from bottom-tier schools aren't good and a high percentage of graduates fail the bar exam. But you're special. You'll study hard, you'll prepare for the bar exam, you'll  pound on doors until a law firm offers you a good job. 

And when you get that J.D. degree, your life will suddenly change for the better. You'll drive a nice car, get married, and buy a craftsman-style house like the happy people who inhabit television commercials.

And of course you took out student loans. To your surprise, back-of-the-pack law schools are just as expensive as Princeton and Stanford. Total costs, including living expenses turned out to be $40,000 a year, $50,000 a year, or even $60,000 a year.

But in for a penny, in for a pound. You realized you can't work your way through law school like in the old days because no one can make enough money from a part-time job to pay a $40,000 tuition bill. So you took out loans every semester and when you walked across the stage to receive your law school diploma, you owed $200,000.

You studied hard for the bar examination and paid for a bar review course. But you didn't pass the exam.

And then you realized--fully realized for the first time--you owe $200,000 in student loans and you will never get a good job as a lawyer.

What's your exit strategy?

There is no exit strategy. You must pay back those student loans whether or not you get a good job or pass the bar exam.  You can stall for time by getting an economic hardship deferment that excuses you from making monthly loan payments. But the deferment doesn't stop interest from accruing. In a few years, the $200,000 you borrowed will grow to $300,000.  

Maybe you were enticed to enroll in a crummy law school based on misrepresentations about the law school's employment rate. Can you sue for fraud? Yes you can, but so far at least, fraud suits against law schools have been unsuccessful. Thomas Jefferson and Thomas M. Cooley both beat that wrap.

Can you discharge your student loans in bankruptcy? Maybe. Michael Hedlund, a graduate of Willamette School of Law, won a partial discharge of his student loans after 10 years of litigation. But several law-school graduates have struck out in the bankruptcy courts. Mark Lilly, a McGeorge law-school graduate, and Mark Tetzlaff, a Florida Coastal graduate, lost their adversary actions in spite of the fact that their law degrees did not enable them to get good attorney jobs. Heather Coplin, a McGeorge law-school graduate working as a waitress, only obtained a partial discharge of her student loans, which totaled almost half a million dollars.

*****

Law schools once operated as professional schools with high ethical standards. Today, however, a great many law schools are nothing more than elegant con games designed to rake in federal student-aid money.

So before you enroll in a third-rate law school, do some research. Read Paul Campos' article in Atlantic. This article was the inspiration for John Grisham's recent novel The Rooster Bar, which tells the story of a young man who attended a dodgy for-profit law school.  And read some of the bankruptcy cases that have been decided against law-school graduates who were unable to find good jobs as attorneys. In particular, read the Tetzlaff case and the Lilly case.

And if you still want to enroll at Florida Coastal or Arizona Summit or Southern Illinois or Thomas Jefferson or Thomas M. Cooley, check yourself into a psychiatric facility--because you probably need to have your head examined.

References

Paul Campos. Don't Go to Law School (Unless). Createspace.com, 2012.

Paul Campos. The Law School Scam. Atlantic Magazine, September 2014. 

Coplin v. U.S. Department of Education,  Case No. 13-46108, Adversary No. 16-04122, 2017 WL 6061580 (Bankr. W.D. Wash. December 6, 2017) (unpublished decision).

Steven J. Harper. Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs, New York Times, August 25, 2015. Accessible at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/opinion/too-many-law-students-too-few-legal-jobs.html

Hedlund v.Educational Resources Institute, 718 F.3d 848, 851 (9th Cir. 2013). 

Lilly v. IllinoisStudent Assistance Commission, 538 B.R. 45 (Bankr. S.D. Cal. 2013).

MacDonald v. Thomas M. Cooley Law School, 724 F.3d 654 (6th Cir. 2013).

David Segal, Is Law School A Losing Game? New York Times, January 8, 2011. Accessible at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?_r=0

Tetzlaff v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 794 F.3d 756 (7th Cir. 2015).

Joshua Wright. The Oversaturated Job Market for Lawyers Continues and On-the-Side Legal Work Grows. EMSI blog, January 10, 2014.

Staci Zaretsky. Verdict Reached in the Alaburda v. Thomas Jefferson Landmark Case Over Fraudulent Employment Statistics. Abovethelaw.com, March 24, 2016.

Coplin v. U.S. Dep't of Education: Bankruptcy court orders single mother of 4 disabled children to repay $222,000 in student loans

Heather Coplin graduated from University of Pacific's McGeorge law school in 2009 and gave birth to triplets that same year. The infants were born prematurely and all three suffer from profound disabilities. At age 8, one triplet is incontinent and requires an electric wheelchair for mobility. The other two triplets have muscular issues that impair their mobility. Two triplets have required shunts to drain spinal fluid.

Coplin also has a 15-year-old child who suffers from autism. He is six feet tall, weighs 340 pounds and engages in "anxiety-induced acting-out behavior." Coplin has called the police on several occasions to deal with her son's aggressiveness.

Coplin herself is bipolar and has made several suicide attempts.

Although Coplin graduated law school in 2009, she was unable to pass the state bar exam until 2012. She practiced law for a time and even established her own firm. She found, however, that family issues prevented her from working as an attorney. At time of trial, Coplin was a night-shift waitress at the Muckleshoot Casino

Coplin filed an adversary proceeding in bankruptcy court to discharge almost half a million dollars in student-loan debt, some of it accruing interest at the rate of 10 percent. Navient, one of her creditors, agreed to discharge part of the debt, but three creditors opposed a discharge: ECMC, the U.S. Department of Education and University of the Pacific.

In a decision entered a few days ago, Judge Mary Jo Heston granted Coplin a partial discharge. Utilizing the three-pronged  Brunner test, Judge Heston concluded Coplin only met two prongs.

First, Coplin met the first prong, which required her to show she could not pay back her student loans and maintain a minimal standard of living.  She also met a second prong, requiring her to show she had handled her student loans in good faith.

Nevertheless, Judge Heston did not grant Coplin a full discharge. Coplin had about $1850 in discretionary monthly income, the judge pointed out.  She could put that amount toward paying off her student loans. Judge Heston ruled that Coplin could pay back $222,000 over a ten-year period; and thus she only granted Coplin a partial discharge.

It should be pointed out that the only reason Coplin had any discretionary income was that she was living in her fiancee's home rent free. In addition, I don't think the bankruptcy judge accurately estimated Coplin's ongoing medical expenses. Coplin said she visited doctors 6 or 7 times a week due to her children's medical issues.

These are my reflections on the Coplin decision:

First, I was struck by Coplin's strong work ethic. As Judge Heston noted, Coplin had worked continuously at a variety of jobs since graduating from law school. She practiced law, sold real estate, worked as a delivery driver, and finally wound up working the night shift as a casino waitress.  No one can say she didn't do her best to feed her family.

Second, I was shocked by the ruthlessness of Coplin's creditors. The creditors--including the U.S. Department of Education--argued Coplin should be denied a discharge because she had not lived frugally.  They pointed to the fact that she occasionally dined at fast food restaurants, had cable television, and had taken a modest vacation.

Is Betsy DeVos' Department of Education saying that a casino waitress with four disabled children is living extravagantly because she occasionally eats at McDonald's? Yes, it is.

Finally, I was astonished by the arrogance of University of the Pacific, where Coplin went to law school. One would think the university would be embarrassed by the fact that one of its law graduates racked up half a million dollars in student-loan debt (including accrued interest), took three years to pass the bar exam and was working as a waitress 8 years after obtaining her law degree. But no--UP wants its money--at 10 percent interest.

In sum, I found the Coplin decision disheartening. If a waitress with four disabled children can't obtain a complete discharge of her student loans in a bankruptcy court then it is difficult to see how any student-loan debtor is entitled to bankruptcy relief. God help us.

Muckleshoot Casino, where attorney Heather Coplin works as a waitress

References

Coplin v. U.S. Department of Education,  Case No. 13-46108, Adversary No. 16-04122, 2017 WL 6061580 (Bankr. W.D. Wash. December 6, 2017).