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Biden announced an additional $600 million in student-loan forgiveness.
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The relief impacts defrauded borrowers and borrowers on income-based repayment plans.
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This marks Biden’s final student-loan forgiveness action before he leaves the White House.
Student-loan forgiveness under President Joe Biden has officially reached the end of the road.
On Thursday, Biden’s Education Department announced over $600 million in debt cancellation for 4,550 borrowers on income-based repayment plans and 4,100 borrowers who the department found were defrauded by DeVry University.
This latest announcement marks the final student-loan forgiveness action under the Biden administration.
“Four years ago, President Biden made a promise to fix a broken student loan system,” Education Sec. Miguel Cardona said in a statement.
“We rolled up our sleeves and, together, we fixed existing programs that had failed to deliver the relief they promised, took bold action on behalf of borrowers who had been cheated by their institutions, and brought financial breathing room to hardworking Americans—including public servants and borrowers with disabilities,” Cardona said.
Thursday’s announcement brings total student debt relief under Biden to $188.8 billion for 5.3 million borrowers. It follows a series of debt relief actions earlier this week, including $4.5 billion in relief on January 15 for defrauded borrowers and $4.2 billion in relief on January 13 for additional defrauded borrowers, along with government and nonprofit workers and those with total and permanent disabilities.
The Education Department also announced on Thursday that it had completed the account adjustments for borrowers on income-driven repayment plans, which corrected borrowers’ payment counts and ensured their progress toward forgiveness was up-to-date. The department said that borrowers who recently transitioned to different servicers might see an additional one or two months of payments credited in the coming weeks.
With Biden’s final actions on student-loan forgiveness, a key chapter for millions of borrowers is closed. President-elect Donald Trump is unlikely to prioritize broad student-loan forgiveness — he previously criticized Biden’s efforts — meaning borrowers will likely continue their payments without expanded avenues for relief.
Meanwhile, the 9 million borrowers enrolled in Biden’s SAVE plan, which he introduced in 2023 in an effort to make payments more affordable, are awaiting a final court decision on the plan, and they remain in forbearance in the meantime.
“For decades, the federal government promised to help people who couldn’t afford their student loans because they were in public service, had disabilities, were cheated by their college, or who had completed decades of payments,” Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a statement. “But it rarely kept those promises until now.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
