In 2011, some protestors encouraged borrowers to refuse to repay their student loans as part of Occupy Wall Street. They said that if enough borrowers joined this protest, the lenders would have no choice but to cancel the student loan debt.

Few people participated, and even those that did only lasted for a month or two. Nobody went into default as part of this protest.

More recently, after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked President Biden’s broad student loan forgiveness plan, some student loan protestors are once again urging their fellow borrowers to intentionally default on their federal student loans as a form of debt disobedience.

This kind of strategic default on federal student loans was a dumb idea then and it is a dumb idea now.

When a borrower defaults on their federal student loans, the only one hurt is the borrower, not the federal government.

Borrowers can’t force the federal government to forgive their student loans by refusing the repay them. Borrowers have no leverage, not even if they act together as a collective.

Even if the borrowers had some leverage, the U.S. Department of Education does not have the legal authority to forgive student loans, just as it doesn’t have the authority to incarcerate defaulted borrowers. Only Congress has the ability to pass laws to forgive student loan debt.