The Biden administration announced Thursday that it is forgiving the student loans for more than 60,000 public service workers.
The move gives $4.5 billion in debt relief to teachers, firefighters and other eligible workers who have been paying on their loans for more than 10 years.
The administration credits the relief to fixes it has made to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program over the past four years, which has resulted in more than 1 million public service workers seeing loan forgiveness, costing some $175 billion.
“Before President Biden and Vice President Harris entered the White House, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was so riddled by dysfunction that just 7,000 Americans ever qualified, and countless public servants were trapped making payments on debts that should have been forgiven,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said.
“From Day One, the Biden-Harris administration made fixing this broken program a top priority, and today, I’m tremendously proud that over one million teachers, nurses, social workers, veterans, and other public servants have received lifechanging loan forgiveness,” Cardona added.
The loan forgiveness comes weeks before the election, with officials giving no indication if borrowers can expect more debt relief in Biden’s last few months in office.
Unlike other debt relief programs the Biden administration has attempted, this forgiveness is unlikely to be challenged in court as it is based on a different authority that is more difficult to fight.
Biden’s Saving on Valuable Education plan, which would lower monthly payments and give some debt relief to certain borrowers, is still held up in court, along with his plan B for broader student debt cancellation that is going through the negotiated rulemaking process.
The Department of Education has worked to improve PSLF the past four years, including over the summer when it took the program and made it fully managed by StudentAid.gov instead of a loan servicer.
The department is also partnering up with multiple organizations to encourage public service workers to enroll in PSLF.
Along with forgiveness for PSLF, the Biden administration has forgiven $56.5 billion through the income-driven repayment programs, $28.7 billion for those who were defrauded by their schools and $16.2 billion for individuals with permanent disabilities.