New student loan forgiveness announced for over 77,000 people

The administration of President Joe Biden has announced a new round of $5.8 billion in student loan forgiveness for more than 77,000 borrowers.

The federal Education Department announced the new relief Thursday. The debt relief is part of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which allows workers in certain fields like health care, nonprofit work and government to have student debt canceled after making payments for 10 years.

Workers like teachers and first responders are often among the beneficiaries of the program.

The program began in 2007, but problems and barriers led to only a few thousand borrowers getting relief through the program until 2021, according to Forbes. The Biden administration has been implementing a series of fixes and the number of people who have benefited has jumped to nearly 900,000.

“For too long, our nation’s teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters, and other public servants faced logistical troubles and trap doors when they tried to access the debt relief they were entitled to under the law,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a news release. “Today, more than 100 times more borrowers are eligible for PSLF than there were at the beginning of the administration.”

Borrowers eligible for the latest round of forgiveness will get an email informing of them soon, Forbes said.

An additional total of nearly 380,000 borrowers who are within two years of receiving forgiveness will also get emails soon. The emails will inform them that they will be eligible for forgiveness within two years if they continue in public service work.

Since 2021, over 871,000 borrowers have seen their student loans canceled through the PSLF, according to the Education Department. The loans totaled nearly $62.5 billion.

In New York since 2021, over 67,000 borrowers have seen more than $4.6 billion in student loans forgiven.