It shouldn't be a tough call at all. Lose the debt and start over from scratch. Make a better decision this time around.
I think you can get a forbearance and delay making payments for a while as they capitalize interest, or do some income-based repayment. But you can't discharge a federal loan, that's Dept of Education so they can take your tax refunds or directly garnish your wages.
Nope, mainstream universities get a lot of their income from research grants, that both raises the hiring standards for faculty to include research skills and publication of both new curricula and textbooks, it also creates an incentive to enhance the classroom content to train future PhDs and researchers. Society accepts mainstream universities over ITT for very material and quantifiable reasons that affect both the productivity of the professional workforce and a graduate's suitability for it.
