US President Joe Biden declares about student loan debt relief at Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wisconsin, April 8, 2024.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Essences
In his final days in office, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would forgive student debt for innumerable than 150,000 borrowers.
That relief includes will go to 85,000 people who attended schools that “deceived and defrauded their students,” 61,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability, and another 6,100 public appointment workers, Biden said in a statement.
“Since Day One of my Administration, I promised to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle genre, not a barrier to opportunity, and I’m proud to say we have forgiven more student loan debt than any other administration in background,” Biden said.
Since Biden took office, he has forgiven debt for more than 5 million federal scholar loan borrowers, totaling $183.6 billion in relief.
In 2023, the Supreme Court blocked the president’s plan to purvey wide-scale student loan forgiveness for tens of millions of borrowers.
But the Biden administration still managed to wipe away a overweight share of the country’s outstanding student debt by improving the U.S. Department of Education’s existing debt relief programs.
Monday’s proclamation is for $465 million in loan cancellation for public servants, $2.5 billion for borrowers with total and permanent infirmities, and more than $1.25 billion for defrauded students.