More than 800,000 borrowers will have $39 billion in federal student loan debt eliminated as part of a government effort to correct years of mistakes by loan service providers who collected payments on behalf of the government.
Loans of lakhs more will be adjusted as part of the programme.
This relief would go to people who have federal loans directly owned by the Department of Education and who have enrolled in income-driven repayment plans. Those plans limit the payments borrowers must make to one percent of their income. Under those plans, borrowers would typically have to make payments for a term of 20 or 25 years. At the end of that period, any balance is forgiven.
More than eight million people use income-driven repayment plans, but for decades, many companies that bill borrowers have made widespread mistakes in tracking payments and guiding borrowers through the payment process. Those errors set millions of borrowers back years in the quest to pay off their loans.
“For too long, borrowers fell victim to the cracks of a broken system,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on Friday.
The planned move comes two weeks after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s plan to eliminate $400 billion in student loans for millions of borrowers. The court ruled that the president did not have the authority to eliminate the debt so broadly without express permission from Congress.
But Friday’s much smaller adjustment, which is separate and has not led to court challenges, falls more under the education secretary’s power to administer loan repayment programs.
The Department of Education said the loan elimination — which will happen in the next few weeks — is part of a plan the Biden administration announced last year to address the problem of servicemember delinquencies. The department decided to credit millions of borrowers by automatically and retroactively withholding their payments for late or partial payments and for longer periods before the pandemic.
The 804,000 borrowers whose balances will be eliminated are those who have made the required 240 or 300 monthly payments (depending on their payment plan) to have their remaining loan forgiven after the adjustment.
The department said last year that so-called “tolerance steering” was a particularly serious issue. Low-income borrowers can qualify for $0 monthly bills through income-driven payment plans, but loan service providers often put struggling borrowers on forbearance – a move that kept their loans in good standing, But this meant that interest kept rising, which increased borrowers’ balances.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Navient in 2017, which at the time was one of the largest government student loan providers, over such tactics. The lawsuit is still in progress, but Navient no longer provides federal loans: It went out of business in 2021.
Borrowers eligible for relief will not need to apply – their loan will be automatically repaid. Mr. Cardona said, “By correcting past administrative failures, we are ensuring that everyone receives the forgiveness they deserve.”
The government, the largest lender to Americans for higher education, owes nearly 45 million borrowers a total of $1.6 trillion. Their loan payments have been put on hold since March 2020 – President Donald J. A move initiated under Trump as a pandemic relief measure, and extended several times by Mr Biden – but that pause will soon be over. Borrowers will have to start making payments again in October.
