US President Joe Biden speaks about student loan 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 forgive student debt for more than 150,000 borrowers.
That relief includes nearly 85,000 people who attended schools that “cheated and defrauded their students,” 61,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability and another 6,100 public service workers, Biden said in a statement.
“Since Day One of my Administration, I promised to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity, and I’m proud to say we have forgiven more student loan debt than any other administration in history,” Biden said.
Since Biden took office, he has forgiven debt for more than 5 million federal student loan borrowers, totaling $183.6 billion in relief.
In 2023, the Supreme Court blocked the president’s plan to deliver wide scale student loan forgiveness for tens of millions of borrowers.
But the Biden administration still managed to wipe away a large share of the country’s outstanding student debt by improving the U.S. Department of Education’s existing debt relief programs.
Monday’s announcement included $465 million in loan cancellation for public servants, $2.5 billion for borrowers with total and permanent disabilities and more than $1.25 billion for defrauded students.