Biden Approves Billions in Student Loan Relief for Public Sector Workers

Call it a presidential parting gift for close to 55,000 public sector employees.

About to enter his last month in office, President Joe Biden has announced the approval of $4.28 billion in student loan relief for 54,900 borrowers who work in public service.

According to a U.S. Department of Education statement, this additional relief brings the Biden administration’s total loan forgiveness to roughly $180 billion for nearly five million Americans, including $78 billion for more than one million borrowers through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program.

The PSLF Program provides an incentive for Americans to pursue and remain in careers in education, public health, law enforcement, emergency response and other critical public service fields by forgiving borrowers’ remaining student loan balance after they have made the required 120 qualifying monthly payments.

The relief includes borrowers who have benefited from the Biden administration’s limited PSLF waiver, a temporary opportunity that ended in October 2022, as well as from regulatory improvements made to the program during Biden’s time in office, according to the Department of Education.

The public sector workers approved for debt cancellation as part of this latest round of relief include teachers, nurses, service members, law enforcement officials “and other public service workers who have dedicated their lives to giving back to their communities and who are finally earning the relief they are entitled to under the law,” a Biden administration statement read.

Saying that his administration “promised to make sure that higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” President Biden described these steps as a way to give millions of Americans “the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt.”