The People Who Are Willing to Destroy Their Credit on Principle

Student loans, especially when they come from the government, are a lot like bedbugs: Once you have them, they’re almost impossible to get rid of. Unlike other debts, the government essentially doesn’t allow people to discharge student loans in bankruptcy, and there’s no statute of limitations on these loans, so if you don’t pay them back, they will stick around as long as you do.

On Monday, 15 former students announced they'd had enough of that particular nightmare and were going on a “debt strike” until the government canceled their student loans. The so-called Corinthian 15 took out federal loans to attend colleges run by Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit company that has agreed to close or sell all of its schools amid investigations into wrongdoing by multiple state attorneys general.