Millions of Americans have filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy to eliminate crippling debt and get a fresh financial start, but nowadays it isn’t unusual for people to come out of the process still owing much of their debt in the form of student loans, according to a report issued Tuesday by LendEDU.
Based on anonymized data from 1,083 bankruptcy cases across the nation supplied by Upsolve, a nonprofit that helps low-income people file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy free of charge, 32 percent of filers had student loan debt.
Among those one in three consumers, student loans on average comprised 49 percent of their total debt, which left them with about half of their debt because student loan debt is almost impossible to discharge in bankruptcy.