On Oct. 4, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it approved an additional $9 billion in student debt relief for 125,000 borrowers. This is on top of the Biden administration’s other student debt relief efforts, which now totals $127 billion for nearly 3.6 million student borrowers.
Soon after, people began searching online to find out how they could apply for the new student loan forgiveness.
THE QUESTION
Do borrowers eligible for the new $9 billion in federal student debt relief have to apply to get forgiveness?
THE SOURCES
Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance (SLSA)
Financial Student Aid (FSA), an office of the U.S. Department of Education
THE ANSWER
No, borrowers eligible for the new $9 billion in federal student debt relief do not have to apply to get forgiveness.
WHAT WE FOUND
The U.S Department of Education is forgiving an additional $9 billion in student debt through administrative processes that allow the department to do so without requiring action from the borrower.
“FSA and ED alone are making these determinations and there is nothing a borrower needs to do,” said Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance (SLSA), in an email to VERIFY. “They will be notified of any account adjustments once ED and FSA make their decisions.”
The student debt relief applies to borrowers in Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) programs, borrowers on income-driven repayment (IDR) plans and borrowers with total or permanent disabilities, an Education Department press release says.
The student debt relief for borrowers in PSLF and IDR plans was approved by the Biden-Harris administration through “fixes” the Education Department made to the two programs, according to the press release.
Federal Student Aid (FSA), which is an office of the Education Department, says it is sending notifications to borrowers it identifies as eligible for debt forgiveness through these fixes every two months until the end of the year.
“No further action is required from these borrowers to get this forgiveness,” FSA says.
The “fixes” the Education Department is referring to are changes in how payment credit is counted for PSLF and IDR borrowers. The PSLF program and IDR plans forgive a borrower’s remaining student debt after a certain number of payments are made over a predetermined amount of time. The Education Department is retroactively giving borrowers credit for payment that was not counted before.
“This isn’t anything new. The White House, ED, and FSA announced their intention to provide this accelerated forgiveness last year,” Buchanan said. “In fact, they are just now getting to the point of the government implementing changes previously announced.”
The rest of the student debt forgiven as part of the Oct. 4 announcement was $1.2 billion in “automatic relief” for student borrowers with total and permanent disabilities. Under the current administration, the Education Department has forgiven $11.7 billion in student debt for borrowers with total and permanent disabilities.
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