Troubled Student Loan Forgiveness Program Gets an Overhaul

The sweeping changes will help more than a half-million public service workers who had thought they were paying down their debt for years.

The Biden administration is overhauling a student loan forgiveness program for public service employees that had become a notorious quagmire, introducing a sweeping set of fixes on Wednesday that Education Department officials said would help more than a half-million people get closer to the relief they had been denied for years.

Previous patchwork efforts to mend the program have largely failed, brought down by the same complexity that crippled the original initiative. But this time, the agency is taking a chain saw to the program’s rules to temporarily clear the way for many people who were previously rebuffed. Advocates who have long pushed for such changes said they were thrilled.

“This is a good day for teachers, nurses, service members and millions of workers serving on the front lines of the pandemic,” said Seth Frotman, a former student loan ombudsman for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who now runs the nonprofit Student Borrower Protection Center. “For too long, those who give the most to our communities and our country have been given the runaround and forced to shoulder debts that should have been canceled.”