President Joe Biden, who has only a few days left in office, said in a White House statement Monday that his administration had granted student loan relief to over 150,000 borrowers, increasing the total number of people who have had their student debt forgiven under the Biden administration to over 5 million.
Despite losing the court struggle to carry out his campaign pledge to establish a comprehensive federal student loan forgiveness program, President Biden declared on Monday that his administration has “forgiven more student loan debt than any other administration in history.”
“More than 80,000 borrowers who were defrauded or cheated by their schools, more than 60,000 borrowers with total and permanent disabilities, and more than 6,000 public service workers are among the 150,000 new beneficiaries announced Monday,” Biden stated in the announcement.
Since taking office, the Biden administration has concentrated on updating and growing federal student loan forgiveness programs. After the Supreme Court overturned Biden’s original plan in 2023, the administration was able to increase loan forgiveness alternatives even while it was unable to establish new federal forgiveness programs.
In order to alleviate the financial strain of loan repayments on some of the most financially vulnerable borrowers in the nation, the Education Department turned to already-existing channels.
Improvements to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which enables public employees to have the remaining balance of their student loan debt forgiven after ten years of payments, were highlighted by Biden on Monday. He also recommended raising the upper limit for Pell Grant disbursements, a type of need-based financial help for low-income students, and correcting administrative mistakes in income-driven repayment plans.
According to Biden, 1.4 million of the 5 million borrowers who had some or all of their loan debt forgiven during the past four years had to repay their debt for decades until the income-driven repayment plans helped them. 1.7 million had been victims of higher education fraud; 663,000 had total or permanent disability; and another 1 million worked in public service, such as teachers and firefighters.
Weeks before, as Biden nears the conclusion of his term, the Education Department announced that it would no longer be offering loan forgiveness to borrowers who were facing severe financial difficulties.
Conservatives in Congress and President-elect Donald Trump have been harshly critical of the administration’s efforts to cancel student loan debt. They have largely claimed that the expensive plans would force Americans without college degrees to shoulder the repayment burden and that Biden has overreached his executive authority, a claim the Supreme Court upheld in its 2023 ruling that Biden’s original plan was an unlawful use of presidential power.
Numerous conservative states filed legal challenges against the administration’s first and second attempts at loan forgiveness, and in August 2024, the Supreme Court rejected a plea by the Biden administration to lift the nationwide injunction on his forgiveness plan that had been imposed by a Missouri appeals court.
According to Biden’s written statement released on Monday, “I have pledged since the first day of my administration to make sure that higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity.”