Student Loan Forgiveness: Biden Administration Makes It Easier for Those Misled by Schools to Have Debt Erased

The Biden administration has set its eyes on a different method of providing debt relief as its proposal to eliminate federal student loan debt for millions of students remains stuck in the courts. This plan is designed to streamline the process through which borrowers may have their student loan debt forgiven if they discover that their school deceived them.

The Federal Student Aid division of the U.S. Department of Education announced the programme on a brand new website titled “Borrower Defense Loan Discharge.” If your school deceived you or participated in other wrongdoing in violation of specific regulations, you may have legal grounds to discharge your federal student loans, and this page lays out the procedures you need to follow to do so.

Borrower defence allows you to have any outstanding amount on your federal student loans for higher education forgiven if your claim is accepted by the Education Department. You might get a return of loan payments you’ve already paid, depending on the agency.

The Education Department recommended include these two items in your application for borrower defence to make your case as strong as possible:

Provide as much information as possible so that it can properly assess your claim (s)
Resolve all the prerequisites of a borrower’s defence claim.
Despite the fact that CNN claimed that borrowers who have been deceived by institutions have always had the opportunity to apply for debt forgiveness, the application procedure wasn’t explicitly defined until the Obama administration. Newly updated application instructions are more detailed and easy to understand.

“The new borrower defence portal is replete with guiding language and ideas to assist borrowers successfully submit their applications and achieve the debt relief to which they are entitled,” said Richard Cordray, chief operating officer of Federal Student Aid, in a statement to CNN. “We will keep working to make people who lost time, money, and the chance at an education whole.”

Borrowers who were duped by for-profit colleges like ITT Technical Institute and DeVry University have had billions of dollars in debt forgiven by the Department of Education. Despite widespread belief to the contrary, not only for-profit institutions are eligible for a borrower defence debt discharge.

According to CNN’s reporting, the United States Department of Education has forgiven over $14.5 billion in student loans under its Borrower Defense programme since Vice President Joe Biden assumed office. About one and a half million debtors have received help from the programme.

This is a dramatic change from the Trump administration, whose education secretary, Betsy DeVos, previously referred to borrower defence as “poor policy.” That student loan forgiveness comes at the expense of the public was one of her main points of contention.

Many Republican legislators are also opposed to the Biden administration’s push to erase student loans, which includes a proposal to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for each borrower. The implementation of that plan has been stalled because of a number of lawsuits questioning its legitimacy. The United States Supreme Court is now considering cases related to the scheme.