Biden’s student-loan breaks

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced it’s overhauling a student loan forgiveness program that it described as “an important — but largely unmet — promise” to ease the burden of college debt on public-sector workers, including teachers, nurses and firefighters.

The sweeping changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which will be implemented in the coming months, are expected to help at least 550,000 borrowers who have already consolidated their loans, the Department of Education estimated.

Roughly 22,000 borrowers will be immediately eligible to have their federal student loans forgiven automatically — to the tune of about $1.74 billion — according to the department’s estimates.

Another 27,000 borrowers could qualify for about $2.82 billion in debt forgiveness if they can prove they were employed in an eligible job, the government added.

Congress created the PSLF program in 2007 in a bid to lure young talent into “highneed fields” in the public workforce instead of betterpaying private-sector jobs.

If young people fresh out of college were willing to pursue a career as a teacher, cop or another kind of government worker, any federal student debt they had after 10 years of public service would be forgiven.

But the program has been plagued by confusion that’s limited its usage. The Education Department said Wednesday that just over 16,000 borrowers have received forgiveness under the program.

One major hindrance to the program has been that it’s currently only available to borrowers who have a specific type of student loan, Direct Loans, from the feds.

The changes announced Wednesday will temporarily allow payments on all kinds of student loans to count toward the program so long as borrowers consolidate their debt by Oct. 31, 2022.