How to navigate confusing loan forgiveness program

The government created the public service loan forgiveness program with a simple premise: Take a job to help the greater good and get some debt relief down the road.

In reality, the process of getting that promised relief has been neither simple nor forgiving.

A confusing set of rules and servicers who provided misleading or incorrect information left many people perplexed by the process and denied forgiveness.

“This is one of those wellintentioned programs that has made millions of people’s heads spin,” said Rohit Chopra, a Federal Trade Commissioner and student loan expert.

The program was designed to encourage people to take jobs in teaching, social work, public health or other positions that typically require higher education but pay modest wages.

To avoid financially crippling these workers, the government would forgive the balance of certain federal student loans after they worked full time for at least 10 years for a government or not-for-profit organization and, during that time, made 120 monthly qualifying payments.

The program was established in 2007, so the initial round of forgiveness was supposed to begin in fall of 2017, but very few people have made it through.

The US Department of Education said that at last count, about 16,000 applications have been submitted for loan forgiveness but fewer than 1,000 people are expected to be eligible to receive that debt forgiveness in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Things became so problematic that the U.S. Department of Education announced last month that Congress made $350 million available for borrowers to be reconsidered for forgiveness if they had already been denied.

So if you are trying to navigate this process, here’s some help:

If you don’t know what type of federal student loans you have, log into studentaid. ed.gov to find out.