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Another batch of student-loan borrowers will soon see their balances turned to zero.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden's Education Department announced that it approved $1.2 billion in student-loan forgiveness for 35,000 public service workers.
The relief is a result of ongoing fixes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers after 10 years of qualifying payments. Specifically, according to the department, this latest relief comes from the limited waiver that ended in October 2022 that allowed payments previously deemed ineligible for PSLF to count, along with regulatory changes to the program.
"The additional Americans approved for PSLF today are hardworking public servants who will finally receive the financial breathing room they were promised — and all PSLF recipients can easily track and manage the process through StudentAid.gov," Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. "This is relief that will bring real change in their lives and marks another win for this administration's relentless and unapologetic work to fix a broken student loan system."
The Biden administration has now approved $168.5 billion for 4.76 million borrowers, of which 946,000 of them were enrolled in PSLF.
This relief is among the Education Department's targeted efforts to improve repayment programs. For example, the department has also been in the process of carrying out its one-time account adjustments, which gives borrowers on PSLF and income-driven repayment plans an opportunity to ensure all of their payments are credited toward the forgiveness timeline.
With regards to PSLF itself, the department has made a series of changes over the past few months. It transitioned borrowers away from MOHELA, previously the sole servicer of PSLF, to a number of different servicers to facilitate the program better.
Additionally, the new SAVE income-driven repayment plan promised debt relief under shorter timelines, but its fate is uncertain, and conservative groups are currently challenging it in court.
Still, the Education Department has vowed to do what it can to carry out relief. It's planning to finalize its broader student-loan forgiveness plan — expected to benefit over 30 million borrowers — in October.
"From day one of my Administration, I promised to fight to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity," Biden said in a statement following Thursday's announcement. "I will never stop working to make higher education affordable — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us."
