The Department of Education and the Biden Administration last week announced an additional $9 billion in student loan debt relief, bringing the total amount of student loans that have been canceled during the current administration to $127 billion.
In the most recent announcement, the Department of Education is providing 53,000 borrowers with $5.2 billion of debt relief under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. More than 50,000 borrowers will receive $2.8 billion in debt relief by fixing their income-driven repayment program, and 22,000 borrowers who are permanently disabled will have $1.2 billion of loans canceled.
“For years, millions of eligible borrowers were unable to access the student debt relief they qualified for, but that’s all changed thanks to President Biden and this Administration’s relentless efforts to fix the broken student loan system,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, in a statement. “The Biden-Harris administration’s laser-like focus on reducing red tape, addressing past administrative failures, and putting borrowers first have now resulted in a historic $127 billion in debt relief approved for nearly 3.6 million borrowers. Today’s announcement builds on everything our administration has already done to protect students from unaffordable debt, make repayment more affordable, and ensure that investments in higher education pay off for students and working families.”
The administration also released a state-by-state breakdown of how much relief has been provided and to how many students under the different programs.
Breaking down the $127 billion in relief looks like this:
- Nearly $42 billion for almost 855,000 borrowers who are eligible for forgiveness through income-driven repayment by fixing historical inaccuracies in the count of payments that qualify toward forgiveness;
- Almost $51 billion for 715,000 public servants through Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs;
- $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.
