President Joe Biden’s Education Department has announced that 453,000 student-loan borrowers in public service have had their debt forgiven over the past year.
Student loan forgiveness application. (Photo Credit: Non-Profit Quarterly)
Waived Student Loans Under Public Service Loan Forgiveness A Success
Biden’s changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) are deemed successful after wiping out the debt of thousands of Americans last year. The program aims to help individuals working in public service jobs repay their loans by forgiving the remaining balance after 10 years of payments.
President Biden enacted the Limited PSLF Waiver in 2021, wherein the Education Department issued emergency regulations that relaxed original rules and expanded qualifying payments for past loan periods to help borrowers accelerate their progress.
That waiver has already expired on October 21, 2022, and the Education Department has released an update on the Federal Aid’s website noting that there were a total of 453,000 borrowers who qualified for loan forgiveness.
Waived Student Loans to Continue
According to Business Insider, the department wrote that some borrowers who submitted their student loan forgiveness application before the deadline may continue to have their applications processed despite the end of the waiver. They can get additional information about this on the department’s website.
The Education Department also announced permanent reforms for PSLF last fall, which includes simplifying eligibility criteria for who could access the program. But these reforms will likely take some time to implement based on the current timeline in which relief through account adjustment was pushed back from July 2023 to 2024 likely due to lack of funding in the budget Congress passed last year.
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