President Joe Biden has announced that his administration will direct additional funds to cancel or reduce student loan balances for another 35,000 individuals through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF).
In a July 18 statement, President Biden said the total number of Americans who have benefitted from the government’s various debt relief actions to date is at least 4.76 million and counting.
“Each of those borrowers has received an average of over $35,000 in debt cancellation,” he said.
“These 35,000 borrowers approved for forgiveness today are public service workers—teachers, nurses, law enforcement officials, and first responders—who have dedicated their lives to strengthening their communities, and because of the fixes we made to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, they will now have more breathing room to support themselves and their families.”
President Biden stated that this latest round of debt forgiveness amounts to $1.2 billion in student loan cancellations, bringing the total to nearly $169 billion forgiven for 4.8 million people nationwide.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the additional individuals approved for the PSLF are “hardworking public servants” who will receive “financial breathing room.”
“This relief 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,” he said.
The PSLF program supports employees of government or not-for-profit organizations and public servants, such as teachers, nurses, and firefighters. It forgives outstanding student loan balances, provided that 120 qualified monthly repayments under an accepted repayment plan are made first.
Full-time employment with an eligible employer is also a requirement, defined as working an average of at least 30 hours per week. Before the Biden administration’s rule change, only about 7,000 public sector employees had qualified for loan forgiveness under the PSLF program.
As of July 1, the Education Department has taken full control of the PSLF program.
The latest round of debt forgiveness includes borrowers who benefited from the limited PSLF waiver, a temporary measure that ended in October 2022.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, nearly 616,000 public-sector employees had their student loan debts forgiven under these temporarily relaxed rules, which began in October 2021.
“Today’s announcement comes on top of the significant progress we’ve made for students and borrowers over the past three years,” President Biden said.
“That includes providing the largest increases to the maximum Pell Grant in over a decade; fixing Income-Driven Repayment so borrowers get the relief they are entitled to under the law; and holding colleges accountable for taking advantage of students and families.”
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