Considering a private loan is secured debt, which cannot be bankrupted, please consider extending loan deferment, forbearance and payment plan programs of private loans to be similar if not the same as Federal FELP loans.
Federal held loans get 60 months of forbearance while most privately held loans only get 12. The loans will one day be paid and private loans do have higher interest rates than federal. With the economy hitting families hard it makes more fiscal sense to let students rise up the economic ladder to afford the payments on the loans without wrecking a student's financial records which may hinder them from obtaining a career position or suffer a charge off.