WASHINGTON (TND) — One of President Joe Biden’s biggest campaign promises, back in 2020, was to forgive all federal student loan debt from public colleges and universities, but millions of borrowers are still waiting for that helping hand. 4.75 million, to be exact, have had their federal student loans partially forgiven out of 44.5 million borrowers.
It’s been a bumpy road for the Biden Administration. Rolling out their student loan forgiveness plan has been met with lots of pushback from the courts on the state and federal level, eventually leading to the Supreme Court striking his plan down. In the midst of all of that, only a certain number of borrowers who met certain eligibility standards were able to get the go-ahead and have their debt forgiven.
But the Biden Administration recently launched a Plan B and started taking applications for a new plan geared toward public servants.
Under the current plan, which is subject to change, Americans could qualify for student loan forgiveness if they check any of these boxes:
- if the borrower is a teacher
- if the borrower is a government employee
- if the borrower is a nurse, doctor, or other medical professional.
- if the borrower has a total or permanent disability.
- and if the borrower has been making payments for the last 20 to 25 years.
According to the Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid office, borrowers hoping to get their loans forgiven must first fill out an application, which is about 16 pages long. The application requires information about the applicant’s qualifying employer and some personal information about their time working there. Once submitted, it takes around three to four weeks to process.
During the processing phase, the DOE ensures the applicant has made the minimum requirement of at least 120 payments on their federal student loans while they were working for the qualifying employer. If the minimum number of payments is met, a final review of the loan forgiveness application is done, which takes about three months.
So if all goes to plan, it should take about four months to get an answer on whether an applicant’s federal student debt is getting forgiven, if they’re eligible.