- Biden touted his efforts to help student-loan borrowers during his State of the Union address.
- While he’s implemented targeted relief to borrowers, many are still waiting for broader measures.
- Here’s where Biden’s efforts to help borrowers stand — and what might come next.
As President Joe Biden made the final State of the Union address of his first term, he wanted federal student-loan borrowers to know that he’s still fighting to get them more relief.
But some borrowers still wonder when that extra relief will hit their accounts.
When Biden was first running for office, he campaigned on canceling $10,000 in student debt per borrower, along with reforming repayment programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Following flaws in the student-loan industry that have kept many borrowers in repayment longer than intended, many borrowers were counting on Biden for broad relief — and he attempted to deliver on that promise in August 2022, when he announced up to $20,000 in debt cancellation for borrowers making under $125,000 a year.
However, that relief did not go according to plan. Shortly after Biden’s announcement, a number of conservative-backed lawsuits arose seeking to block the implementation of the relief, and the Supreme Court ruled in June 2023 that Biden could not move forward with his first try at broad student-loan forgiveness.
The Education Department is undergoing a process to get relief to borrowers using a different law, but it will take time to reach borrowers. Clare McCann, director of higher education at Arnold Ventures — an organization that researched and advocates for policy reforms — told Business Insider that Biden has “really put a lot of energy into making sure existing loan forgiveness and loan discharge authorities really work for borrowers.”
“At the same time, what’s really important is making sure future cohorts of borrowers are not left in this situation to begin with,” McCann said.
Biden touted the relief he’s already delivered during his address Thursday night, saying: “I fixed student loan programs to reduce the burden of student debt for nearly 4 million Americans.”
“Such relief is good for the economy because folks are now able to buy a home, start a business, even start a family,” Biden said.
Here’s what Biden has done so far to get relief to “as many borrowers as possible,” per the White House — and what might come next.
Targeted student-loan forgiveness
While the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s first try at broad student-loan forgiveness, he has still enacted smaller amounts of relief to borrowers through various reforms.
So far, his administration has canceled $138 billion in student debt for about 3.9 million borrowers — partly due to account adjustments for borrowers in PSLF and income-driven repayment plans who made the qualifying number of payments but had yet to see relief.
Additionally, the Education Department has announced debt cancellation for borrowers defrauded by the schools they attended, including the major for-profit chains ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges.
Improved higher-ed regulations
Along with targeted relief, McCann said a key factor in helping borrowers is the Education Department’s efforts to ensure “colleges are providing value, and that education pays off for borrowers in the future.”
An example of that effort is the department’s new gainful employment rule. First established in 2014, the rule cut off federal student aid for schools that offered degrees that left students with too much debt compared to their likely post-graduation earnings.
While former President Donald Trump repealed the rule in 2019, Biden’s administration reinstated it to protect students from taking on spiraling debt loads.
The department also announced a financial transparency framework to give students upfront information on the costs of their degrees and how much debt they should expect to acquire.
A new repayment plan
Biden codified the end of the over three-year student-loan payment pause in his bill to raise the debt ceiling in June, leading payments to once again resume in October. In an attempt to make the transition easier for borrowers, the Education Department announced a new income-driven repayment plan, known as the SAVE plan, intended to lower monthly payments for many borrowers.
The plan includes a range of provisions intended to make relief more accessible for borrowers. In January, the department announced it would be implementing one of those provisions ahead of schedule: loan forgiveness for borrowers who originally borrowed $12,000 or less and made as few as 10 years of qualifying payments.
In February, the department announced $1.2 billion in debt relief for 153,000 borrowers, the first group to benefit from that provision.
Other plan elements to be implemented later this year include cutting payments for undergraduate borrowers in half and counting periods spent in deferment or forbearance toward relief.
A second attempt at broader debt relief
A process that has likely gotten the most attention from borrowers is the Education Department’s second attempt at a broader version of student-debt cancellation.
On the same day the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s first relief attempt, the department announced a new route using the Higher Education Act of 1965. That law requires the administration to participate in a process known as negotiated rulemaking, which involves a series of negotiation sessions with stakeholders and periods of public comment before the relief can reach borrowers.
The department concluded its fourth and final negotiation session in February, and it’s now drafting its proposal to present to the public for comment. Based on the text proposed at the negotiations, the department is considering five groups of borrowers for relief, including those with balances greater than what they originally owed, along with a category to determine what hardship factors would qualify a borrower for relief.
However, McCann said that “we don’t have much sense of the department’s timeline” for the relief at this point, and “borrowers should expect that this regulation will likely be entangled in litigation pretty quickly.”
“So I think it’s very unlikely that borrowers will have seen actually dollars discharged before the election,” McCann said, when it comes to implementation of this new regulation.
