Federal pathway to student loan forgiveness just got less complicated

But the program's confusing eligibility requirements, like stipulations about payment schedules, meant the program was meaningless for most borrowers. Now, President Biden's Department of Education says it will make it a lot easier to successfully access student debt forgiveness. The Education Department announced earlier this month a vast overhaul to the loan forgiveness program that will erase the debt of 22,000 borrowers, totaling $1.7 billion. The government estimated another 27,000 borrowers could see about $2.8 billion in debts forgiven if they prove they were employed in an eligible job. Shannon Green sits down with USA TODAY education reporter Chris Quintana to discuss who’s affected by the Department of Education's announcement and how they can be connected to loan forgiveness resources. Hey there, I'm Claire Thornton. And this is 5 Things. It's Sunday, October 17th. These Sunday episodes are special. We're bringing you more from in-depth stories you may have already heard.$1.7 trillion and growing, that's collectively how much students in the US owe on their college loans. Progressive's have long called for relief for people burdened with student debt. One federal program initiated in 2007, that had promised forgiveness for loans but hadn't delivered. It's now getting an overhaul. Podcast producer Shannon Green, who you've heard on the show before, talked with USA TODAY education reporter Chris Quintana about the news. Here's that interview. The Department of Education has just announced sweeping changes for student loan forgiveness program. So I've asked Chris Quintana, our education enterprise reporter onto the podcast to explain what that means for folks who are eligible and why it's largely failed to erase eligible students debt so far. Chris, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me, I'm really excited to be here. Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program was created to incentivize students to become teachers, police officers, or take on other public sector work. But thousands upon thousands have applied for forgiveness and the federal government has rejected nearly all of them. Chris, what's going on? Why is that? Yeah. This is kind of one of these well-intentioned government programs that just in reality hasn't worked as smoothly as one might hope. The idea behind public service loan forgiveness was pretty simple, right? You work for 10 years in the public sector. And after that time, whatever federal student debt you had left would be forgiven, but it came with all these caveats. So you had to have the right kind of loan and you had to be on the right sort of repayment plan. And if you were behind by like a day or two on a payment that wouldn't count towards the collective number of payments you had to reach to be eligible for forgiveness. So there were just a lot of pitfalls along the way for borrowers to try and access this relief.


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Article Link: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2...


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