U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about student debt relief at Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wisconsin, April 8, 2024.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
In his final days in office, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would cancel the student debt of more than 150,000 borrowers.
That aid will include 85,000 people who attended schools that “misled and defrauded their students,” 61,000 borrowers with total and permanent disabilities, and 6,100 other public employees, Biden said in a statement.
“Since day one in office, I have promised to ensure that higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity, and I am proud to say that we have canceled more student debt than any other administration in history. » Biden said.
Since Biden took office, he has canceled debt for more than 5 million federal borrowers, totaling $183.6 billion in relief.
In 2023, the Supreme Court blocked the president’s plan to provide large-scale student loan forgiveness to tens of millions of borrowers.
But the Biden administration still managed to erase much of the nation’s outstanding student debt by enhancing the U.S. Department of Education’s existing debt relief programs.
Monday’s announcement covers $465 million in loan forgiveness for public employees, $2.5 billion for borrowers with total and permanent disabilities and more than $1.25 billion for defrauded students.
