President Joe Biden announced Friday that his administration was canceling nearly $5 billion in student loan debt for an additional 74,000 borrowers, the latest action to deliver relief in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down his larger forgiveness plan last year.

What You Need To Know

  • President Joe Biden announced Friday that his administration was canceling nearly $5 billion in student loan debt for an additional 74,000 borrowers

  • More than half of the group are teachers, nurses, firefighters and others who earned the forgiveness after a decade of public service

  • All told, the White House said, more 3.7 million people have had their student debt eliminated since President Biden took office in 2021, to the tune of $136.6 billion

  • Roughly 43 million people owe a collective $1.6 trillion in federal student debt, according to government data

According to the White House, more than half of the group — roughly 44,000 in all — are teachers, nurses, firefighters and others who earned the forgiveness after a decade of public service. The other 30,000 borrowers are those who have paid their loans for at least 20 years but never received relief under income-driven repayment plans.

“My Administration is able to deliver relief to these borrowers – and millions more – because of fixes we made to broken student loan programs that were preventing borrowers from getting relief they were entitled to under the law,” the president said in a statement Friday.

“The nearly $5 billion in additional debt relief announced today will go to teachers, social workers, and other public servants whose service to our communities have earned them Public Service Loan Forgiveness, as well as borrowers qualifying for income-driven repayment forgiveness because their payments are for the first time being accurately accounted for,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a separate release.

All told, the White House said, more 3.7 million people have had their student debt eliminated since President Biden took office in 2021, to the tune of $136.6 billion. Roughly 43 million people owe a collective $1.6 trillion in federal student debt, according to government data.

Since the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s more sweeping student loan plan — which would have canceled $10,000 in student loans for low-to-middle income borrowers and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients — the administration has taken smaller piecemeal steps to try and deliver relief for borrowers, a key promise during the president’s 2020 campaign.

Following the high court’s ruling, the Biden administration announced it will try a new path to forgiving student debt under the Higher Education Act of 1965. That plan is expected to take months to finalize. Biden said Friday that “we are continuing to pursue an alternative path to deliver student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision.

Last week, the White House announced that borrowers enrolled in President Biden's SAVE (Saving on A Valuable Education) plan who originally took out less than $12,000 in loans and have made payments for at least 10 years would see their remaining student debt canceled. According to the Education Department, 6.9 million people have enrolled in the plan as of this month.

Opponents of the SAVE proposal say that it is unfair to those who already paid back their loans or did not go to college. They also point out debt forgiveness does nothing address the root cause of why college is so expensive and leaves many Americans in debt. A group of Republican senators tried late last year to overturn Biden's SAVE plan, but failed to do so despite winning over the support of one Democratic lawmaker, retiring West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.