President Joe Biden announced Monday that his administration had approved student loan relief for more than 150,000 borrowers, bringing the total number who have had their student debt cancelled under the Biden administration to over 5 million, he said in a White House release.
Although Biden lost the legal battle to deliver on his campaign promise of implementing a broad federal student loan forgiveness program, the president said Monday that his administration has still “forgiven more student loan debt than any other administration in history.”
The 150,000 new beneficiaries announced Monday include more than 80,000 borrowers who were cheated or defrauded by their schools, over 60,000 borrowers with total and permanent disabilities, and more than 6,000 public service workers, Biden said in the release.
The Biden administration has focused on revising and expanding federal student loan forgiveness programs that existed before Biden took office. That approach allowed the administration to expand loan forgiveness options despite its failure to implement new federal forgiveness programs after the Supreme Court struck-down Biden’s initial plan in 2023.
The Education Department pivoted to pre-existing pathways meant to lift the financial burden of loan repayments on some of the country’s most financially vulnerable borrowers.
Biden cited improvements to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which allows public servants to have the remainder of their student loan debt cancelled after making a decade’s worth of payments. He also pointed to fixing administrative errors in income-driven repayment programs and expanding the maximum limit for Pell Grant awards, a form of need-based financial aid for low-income students.
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