By Charlene Crowell –
Teachers, social workers, and other public servants are among those expected to benefit from recent Biden Administration efforts to expand eligibility for federal student loan forgiveness.
Collectively, these borrowers will be relieved of $4.9 billion debt in return for their service to communities that earned them forgiveness under Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and Income-Driven Repayment (IDR).
“The Biden-Harris Administration has worked relentlessly to fix our country’s broken student loan system and address the needless hurdles and administrative inaccuracies that, in the past, kept borrowers from getting the student debt forgiveness they deserved,” said US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
James Kvaal, U.S. Under Secretary of Education added, “The Biden-Harris Administration is not going to stop until we’ve helped all of those harmed by the broken student loan system.”
Announced by the federal Department of Education in January, this latest expansion boosts the Biden Administration’ s total student loan forgiveness to $136.6 billion for more than 3.7 million borrowers. Here’s how this unprecedented loan relief was accomplished:
- $56.7 billion for 793,400 borrowers enrolled in PSLF since October 2021. Prior to the Biden-Harris Administration’s fixes to PSLF, only about 7,000 borrowers had ever received forgiveness;
- $45.7 billion in IDR relief for 930,500 borrowers;
- $11.7 billion for almost 513,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability; and
- $22.5 billion for more than 1.3 million borrowers who were cheated by their schools, saw their institutions precipitously close, or are covered by related court settlements.
In late 2023, the Federal Reserve determined that although most consumers pay $400 or less in monthly loan payments, 19 percent of borrowers pay far more. As reported by Motley Fool,…
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