Four million borrowers are now being excluded from student loan forgiveness — here's who is being removed and what you can do (2024)

FAQs

Who will get their student loan forgiven? ›

Under Public Service Loan Forgiveness, borrowers in public service for 10 years who have made 120 months of qualifying payments can get their remaining student debt canceled.

You must be a direct employee of a qualifying employer for your employment to qualify. This means that employees of contracted organizations, that are not themselves a qualifying employer, won't qualify for PSLF including government contractors and for-profit organizations.

The 18 states are suing the Biden administration to block the SAVE plan. SAVE is the Education Department's newest income-driven repayment plan, providing more affordable monthly payments and, in some cases, an accelerated track to student loan forgiveness.

Your loan can be discharged only under specific circ*mstances, such as school closure, a school's false certification of your eligibility to receive a loan, a school's failure to pay a required loan refund, or because of total and permanent disability, bankruptcy, identity theft, or death.

IDR account adjustment

If you're a longtime borrower who has been in repayment for at least 20 or 25 years, you could get automatic loan forgiveness by September 2024. This is the result of a one-time program called the IDR account adjustment.

That includes 4.6 million with a $0 monthly payment. Today's announcement brings the total loan forgiveness approved by the Biden-Harris Administration to $167 billion for 4.75 million Americans.

“Under President Biden's leadership, our Administration has now approved loan forgiveness for nearly 3.9 million borrowers, and our historic fight to cancel student debt isn't over yet.”

If you work full time for a government or nonprofit organization, you may qualify for forgiveness of the entire remaining balance of your Direct Loans after you've made 120 qualifying payments—i.e., 10 years of payments.

In Biden v. Nebraska, which was decided 6-3, the court struck down the administration's student loan forgiveness program and agreed with the six challenging states that they had standing to sue. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the majority.

More than 1 million defrauded borrowers attended for-profit or formally for-profit schools such as Westwood College, DeVry University, Corinthian College, Ashford University, CollegeAmerica, and ITT Tech, to name a few.

What states are suing Biden over student loans? ›

The lawsuit asks a judge to halt the plan immediately. Along with Kansas, the suit is backed by Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

If you're not working full-time, you may get denied for student loan forgiveness. But this doesn't necessarily mean you have to work a full 40 hours a week.

If you will be incarcerated for 10 years or more, you can ask the government to write off your defaulted federal student loans.

This program forgives up to $17,500 of student loan principal and interest for those who teach full time for five consecutive, complete academic years. This applies to certain schools or educational service agencies that serve primarily low-income families.

Other major changes will take effect in July 2024. Payments on undergraduate loans will be capped at 5% of discretionary income, down from 10% now. Those with graduate and undergraduate loans will pay between 5% and 10%, depending on their original loan balance.

Borrowers enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan can see their debt forgiven after 20 or 25 years of payments, depending on their loan. That adjustment, which was initially rolled out in 2022, reviews borrowers' accounts and gives them credit for making partial and late payments.

Parent borrowers may be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) after making 120 qualifying payments (ten years). Parent PLUS loans are eligible if they are in the Direct Loan program or included in a Federal Direct Consolidation Loan. The borrower must work full-time in a qualifying public service job.