Biden Forgives Another $4.5 Billion in Student Debt for Over 60,000 Borrowers

The Biden-Harris administration has approved an additional $4.5 billion in student debt for more than 60,000 borrowers.

This round of debt forgiveness brings the number of public service workers who had their loans for college canceled to over one million. In total, the amount approved by the Biden administration has now reached $175 billion for about five million Americans.

Each of these people, from every state or territory in the United States, saw an average of nearly $35,000 forgiven in student debt, Erudera.com reports.

Before Biden’s term as president, only 7,000 borrowers had their loans forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, the White House said in a statement.

“Thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s significant improvements to the PSLF program, over 1 million teachers, firefighters, law enforcement officials, nurses, servicemembers, and other public service workers who have dedicated their lives to serving their communities are getting the student debt relief they are entitled to under the law,” the statement said.

It recalled the Biden-Harris administration's efforts to fix the current student loan system and to reduce the financial burden of student debt.

“From Day One, the Biden-Harris administration made fixing this broken program a top priority, and today, I’m tremendously proud that over one million teachers, nurses, social workers, veterans, and other public servants have received lifechanging loan forgiveness,” US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said.

Biden pledged to help those with student loan balances during his presidential campaign. However, his plan to reduce or forgive student loans was soon blocked by Republican-led states. Last year, the Supreme Court rejected the plan to erase more than $400 billion in student debt.

Another attempt was the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which is a program that calculates payments based on borrowers' income and not their student debt balance, was also blocked in July by a federal appeals court.

To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has also approved:

• $74 billion for over one million borrowers through the PSLF.
• $56.5 billion for over 1.4 million borrowers through Income-Driven Repayment (IDR)
• $28.7 billion for more than 1.6 million defrauded student loan borrowers (cheated by their schools or whose institutions closed).
• $16.2 billion for some 572,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability.

Read Also:

>> Fewer International Students Would Choose to Study in US If Trump Wins, Survey Finds