Biden Cancels $4.7 Billion in Student Debt for 60,000 Public Service Workers

President Joe Biden listens to a briefing on Hurricane Milton in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus on Oct. 9. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

President Joe Biden said on Oct. 17 that his administration has forgiven an additional $4.7 billion in student debt for more than 60,000 public service workers.

This brings the amount of student debt forgiveness to public service workers to more than $73 billion for more than 1 million people under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which was created in 2007 under President George W. Bush and allows for people to have their student debt forgiven after 10 years in public service with a decade of payments.

“These public service workers are hard-working teachers, first responders, nurses, firefighters, service members and more, who dedicate their careers to their communities,” a senior administration official said. “They were promised student loan forgiveness after 10 years of public service and 10 years of payments, but for too long, the program failed to live up to that commitment.”

The official attributed the problems to administrative errors.

Borrowers will see their payment counts updated as adjustments are underway, according to a second senior administration official.

Before Biden took office, only 7,000 public service workers had gotten relief under PSLF.

The administration will also inform students about how much they will earn from their program before they borrow, according to the second official.

The Biden administration has tried to forgive $175 billion in student debt for almost 5 million Americans, an average of about $35,000 each.

However, the Supreme Court has blocked the relief multiple times. In 2023, the court said the administration overstepped its authority in forgiving $400 billion in loans.

Lower courts have also weighed in.

Last month, a federal judge continued an order halting another student debt forgiveness program, which was set to begin this month, to more than 30 million borrowers in what was a win for several GOP attorneys general who said the administration has “unlawfully tried to mass cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in loans.”

The order was issued by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

In July, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the administration’s attempt to forgive student loans under the SAVE Plan.

Nonetheless, Biden said the Oct. 17 announcement “comes on top of the significant progress” the administration has made for students and borrowers over the past three years, including “providing the largest increases to the maximum Pell Grant award in over a decade; fixing Income-Driven Repayment so borrowers get the relief they earned; and holding colleges accountable for taking advantage of students and families.”

The administration touted the latest loan forgiveness for public service as an example of Biden’s keeping a promise.

A third senior administration official said, “When you look across the four years of this administration, it is quite clear that a significant part of this president’s legacy will be his commitment to and successful delivery of substantial relief to millions of Americans who have struggled with the burden of student loan debt.”