You have identified an important paradox in the bankruptcy laws. But it is constitutional. Congress has the power to determine which debts will be discharged in a bankruptcy case.Student loans were in fact dischargeable from 1979 to about 1994, providing the debt had been in a repayable status for anywhere from 5 years to 7 years. President Clinton signed legislation in about 1994 which brought us to where we are now, reversing and ending those reasonable, sensible restrictions.Here is the link to an interesting case history where I helped someone who was being hounded over a 1980 student loan. I wrote about it on my personal blog. And it gives a good chronology of the the dates when the various laws came and went. Student Loan Law - 37 Years Long Nightmare Ended.I think the change did not happen by accident. u201cFollow the moneyu201d, as they say. Until then, loans for u201cfor profitu201d privately owned vocational schools and colleges were dischargeable.The owners of those u201cfor profitu201d colleges saw a chance to make a lot more money by signing up more students. But they couldnu2019t get those extra students unless the colleges could help students obtain student loans to pay tuition to the college owners. The lenders who made student loans were not interested in the for profit college market.After passage of the 1994 Act, banks were falling all over themselves to make private student loans, because suddenly those loans were non dischargeable in bankruptcy, provided it was to attend a school of u201chigher education, u201d (not hairdresser schools, etc).One of the most politically powerful members of the US Senate is Diane Feinstein. Her husband was, (and still is) a major investor in for profit trade schools.The lenders correctly saw that many of those schools were providing useless education, and the graduates could not get good paying jobs. To cap it all off, the loans given to those students were dischargeable in bankruptcy. So, the school owners fixed that with another new law in 2023 that killed off the ability to discharge vocational school loans. That one really helped the Senator and her husband!