Preserving The Promise Of Higher Education: Ensuring Access To The "American Dream" Through Student Debt Reform

Source: Bryan D. Watson. University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy. Dec2014, Vol. 25 Issue 3, p315-330. 16p.

Summary: Many Americans believe that a college education is an integral part of the “American Dream”. However, a huge portion of those Americans generate so much debt that they fall into a financial hole that they may never be able to recover from. This may likely keep the student borrower from getting married, having children, starting a business, or purchasing a home until they become more financially secure. Bankruptcy is designed to relieve a debtor of his or her debt in an opportunity to start anew, unhindered from the opposition of preexisting debt. However,  In 1976 Title 11 of the U.S. Code told us that bankruptcy will be filed entirely through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, meaning that student loans are no longer fully dischargeable in America. Purposefully, Title 11 clearly states that bankruptcy will not relieve a debtor with debt created from any sort of educational loan. Access to the higher education portion of the “American Dream” will need the repeal of Title 11 of the U.S. Code or else the problem will only worsen for college students in the future. The repeal of Title 11 will not fix the problem with student loans altogether, but it's a good place to start a change.

Quality: Watson backs up all of his facts with quotes and he does a great job displaying the works he cites at the bottom of each page. This Is certainly convenient for the reader if one was interested in checking out the original source. For example, in the first paragraph Watson claims: “Despite the individual and societal benefits gained from a higher education, the economic burden created by student borrowing has created a drag on the American economy since the 2008 recession, threatening the countries future well-being.” He then directed us to the references just below that paragraph and the quote information was according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is a very reliable source because they are a government owned site. Watson does this all throughout “Preserving the Promise of Higher Education: Ensuring Access to the “American Dream” Through Student Debt Reform”.

Issues: Regardless of how well written the essay is, Watson mistakenly made the essay too hard for an average reader to understand. My partner and I had to reread several of his paragraphs more than a couple times until we finally understood what Watson was trying to tell us. For example, Watson said "students cannot realistically seek the protection of personal bankruptcy, these borrowers' personal economic situation will likely continue to deteriorate, with predictable consequences for an already- anemic job market and an American economy that continues to sputter". His vocabulary is outstanding but it is simply too hard to understand what he's trying to say the first time that you read it. The writing throughout the whole essay is similar to the example just mentioned, and could benefit greatly with a downgrade on the vocabulary so that a broader audience can understand exactly what is being told to us.