The years Mr. Rosenberg spent struggling to pay back his loans is enough evidence to suggest that the system is broken. Judge Morris saw this as a straight forward case. Instead of focusing on justifying Rosenberg’s inability to use his degree to make enough money to pay off his debt, Morris focused on the evidence suggesting that Rosenberg could not maintain a minimal standard of living with the debt he incurred. Morris cited this approach as the correct reading of the Brunner case and then followed with a list of previous cases that failed to interpret this standard correctly.

The strongest piece of evidence for Mr. Rosenberg bankruptcy case was his negative income of about $1,500 each month. This was an undue burden because it demonstrated that Rosenberg could not maintain a minimal standard of living. It is safe to assume that Rosenberg is not alone. There are probably countless others not able to make the minimum loan payments with their current salary. Many are letting the interest balloon and double their debt because they assume that bankruptcy is not an option.

When you read the Brunner case through the lens of rising college debt and stagnating wages, assumptions about fault and blame change. The EAA is a large reason why tuition costs ballooned the way they did. On top of that, many students were promised that investing in a degree would yield the same results it did for the previous generation. You should no longer need to prove that extenuating circumstances prevented you from paying the debt, when that is obviously no longer the exception. There is something fundamentally wrong with higher education and it is time that courts start to recognize that. The Rosenberg case could be the ruling that sets a new precedent.