Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Now Tops $9.5 Billion — But Eligibility Is Narrow

Over the course of the last several months, the Biden administration has used executive action to cancel billions in student loan debt for hundreds of thousands of borrowers. But so far, the enacted student loan forgiveness has been highly targeted to benefit narrowly-defined categories of borrowers. 

Here’s a breakdown of the benefits so far:
 

• $1.5 billion in approved or expanded claims under the Borrower Defense to Repayment program, which cancels the federal student loan debt for borrowers who were defrauded by their school. Importantly, much of this relief will go to borrowers who already had claims approved by the Department, but were granted only partial or limited relief. The Biden administration reversed a Trump-era “partial relief” policy, enabling these borrowers to obtain full cancellation of their applicable federal student loans. 
• $1.1 billion in approved Closed-School Discharges for federal student loan borrowers directly impacted by the collapse of ITT Technical Institutes in 2016. The relief is restricted to borrowers who attended an ITT institution that shut down between November 1, 2013 and July 1, 2020 and did not enroll in another institution within three years of their school's closure.
• $5.8 billion in automatic federal student loan discharges under the Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) dischargeprogram. This only applies to borrowers who have already been determined to be disabled by the Social Security Administration, and are receiving Social Security Disability benefits with a disability review period of at least five to seven years.