U.S. President Joe Biden speaks on student debt relief at Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wisconsin, on April 8, 2024.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
In his last days in office, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would forgive student debt for more than 150,000 borrowers.
That relief includes 85,000 people who attended schools that “cheated and cheated their students,” 61,000 borrowers with total and permanent disabilities and another 6,100 public service workers, Biden said in a statement.
“From day one of my administration, I promised to make sure that higher education was a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity, and I’m proud to say that we’ve written off more student loan debt than any other administration in history,” he said. is Biden.
Since Biden took office, he has forgiven more than 5 million federal student loan debts, totaling $183.6 billion in aid.
In 2023, the Supreme Court blocked the president’s plan for sweeping student loan forgiveness for tens of millions of borrowers.
But the Biden administration still managed to wipe out much of the nation’s outstanding student debt by improving the US Department of Education’s existing debt relief programs.
Monday’s announcement includes $465 million in loan cancellations for public employees, $2.5 billion for total and permanent disability borrowers and more than $1.25 billion for defrauded students.