You can discharge them through bankruptcy but it's not automatic. You have to prove repayment would cause "undue hardship".

https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation...

What that page doesn't tell you is the precedence courts have set for those tests is so high that nearly no one qualifies for them, and thus it is the case that the loans are virtually impossible to discharge even if it means losing your home and all your possessions.

lol no. They were designed initially so that law and medical students wouldn’t be able to skip out on loans as was common early on.

There are the paths out: repayment, death and fleeing the country.

Interesting, but that seems to be for exceptional circumstances ... A few hundred cases per year apparently. But maybe this route could grow substantially. Interesting reading-

https://www.ablj.org/bridging-the-student-loan-bankruptcy-ga...