The Biden administration said on March 21 that it would cancel billions of dollars in student loans for tens of thousands of public service workers, bringing the total number of Americans who have received education debt relief to almost 4 million.
The latest move to forgive student loans pertains to public service workers and will be done through fixes the government said it instituted in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which is open to borrowers who work for the government or qualifying nonprofit organizations. To apply, borrowers must submit a PSLF form, available on the Department of Education's website, and can use a help tool to determine their eligibility.
Student loan forgiveness has been a key policy of President Joe Biden's administration since he took office in 2021. In the announcement Thursday, Biden said 78,000 public service workers would be affected by the latest debt cancellation, totaling almost $6 billion. Overall, the new relief effort brings the amount of student loans the Biden administration has erased to almost $144 billion for about 4 million people, the Department of Education said in a statement.
Biden said in the announcement that his administration had now erased the student debt owed by almost 900,000 public service workers, while only 7,000 public service workers had received forgiveness before he took office.
Read more: Student Loan Forgiveness Updates
"These public service workers have dedicated their careers to serving their communities, but because of past administrative failures, never got the relief they were entitled to under the law," Biden added.
The Education Department said the government instituted some administrative fixes that helped unlock the forgiveness announced Thursday. The reforms of the PSLF program has helped 100 times more borrowers since October 2021 and led to a total $62.5 billion in debt forgiveness, it added.
"For too long, our nation's teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters, and other public servants faced logistical troubles and trap doors when they tried to access the debt relief they were entitled to under the law," Miguel Cardona, the secretary of education, said in a statement. "With this announcement, the Biden-Harris Administration is showing how we're taking further steps not only to fix those trap doors, but also to expand opportunity to many more Americans."
In June, an initial plan to cancel up $20,000 of student debt failed to take effect after the Supreme Court struck down the policy. Following that decision, the government has deployed different approaches to forgive education debt—including through the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, an approach that seeks to shorten the time to forgiveness for borrowers.
After a pause during the pandemic, interest on student loans restarted in September and student debt repayment resumed in October. Experts estimated that households could be spending about $200 to $300 a month on repaying their student debt. More than 40 million Americans owe education loans totaling about $1.6 trillion.
Biden said Thursday that his administration would continue to work at forgiving more student debt.
Read more: How to Consolidate Student Loans
"From day one of my Administration, I promised to fix broken student loan programs and make sure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity," he said in a statement. "I won't back down from using every tool at my disposal to deliver student debt relief to more Americans."
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Omar Mohammed is a Newsweek reporter based in the Greater Boston area. His focus is reporting on the Economy and ... Read more
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