The US government's reinstatement of student loan debt collection has precipitated a vertiginous decline in credit scores for millions of Americans, as delinquency reporting to major credit bureaus after a mere 90 days of non-payment – a practice with ramifications comparable to personal bankruptcy – curtails access to and inflates the cost of crucial financial instruments such as vehicle financing, mortgages, and credit facilities, a situation exacerbated, as evidenced by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Q1 2025 data, which revealed that over 3 million student loan recipients experienced a precipitous drop in their creditworthiness, following the cessation of the US Department of Education's pandemic-era forbearance, initiated in March 2020 and briefly extended via a one-year grace period after the 2023 resumption, only to be superseded by the Trump administration's late-2024 recommencement of aggressive recovery protocols for outstanding educational debt.