- The Education Department recently announced temporary reforms to Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
- FSA head Richard Cordray told borrowers "not to flood our phone lines" as he delivers debt relief.
- Thousands of public servants were previously denied relief due to flaws in the loan forgiveness program.
A top student-loan official said much more student-debt relief is to come — borrowers just need to sit back and wait.
"Please continue to be patient, log in to FedLoan's borrower portal to check your progress, and try not to flood our phone lines so we can focus on doing this work for you," Federal Student Aid head Richard Cordray wrote on Twitter last week.
His plea comes after thousands of student-loan borrowers saw their debt balances turn to zero after President Joe Biden's Education Department launched temporary reforms to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program in October.
—Richard Cordray (@FSACOO) February 22, 2022
PSLF was created in 2007 to forgive student debt for public servants, like teachers and nonprofit workers, after ten years of qualifying payments. But since the first group of borrowers became eligible for forgiveness in 2017, the program ran up a 98% denial rate, prompting reforms from Biden's Education Department. Although some of the reforms are limited-time — including a waiver through October that would allow any past payments to count toward forgiveness progress — the department said at the time thousands of borrowers would become eligible for billions in relief.
For example, a month after the reforms were announced, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said 10,000 public servants had already gotten $715 million in student debt wiped out, and $2 billion in relief would be coming for over 30,000 more borrowers. According to recent Education Department data, over 70,000 borrowers have had their debt wiped out to date.
"Over the last year 70,000 first responders, teachers, service members & other public servants received debt forgiveness, 4x the previous total," Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal wrote on Twitter in January. "We are proud to have their back."
As Insider previously reported, and as Cordray noted in his tweet, little action on the borrower's part needs to be taken to receive loan forgiveness. The main thing borrowers must do is ensure their loans are consolidated into a direct federal loan, and after submitting a PSLF application, the department will take it from there.
To help deliver relief to borrowers, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) — a controversial student-loan company that manages PSLF — announced in November it would extend its contract one additional year to allow time for impacted borrowers to smoothly transition to a new company.
Even so, some public servants are confused by what the reforms mean for them and are waiting for the loan forgiveness they think they deserve. One borrower told Insider in November that even after working in public service for two decades, she has yet to receive relief and it's "anxiety-inducing" not knowing where her debt load stands.
Lisa Ansell — a teacher who got her remaining $44,000 student-debt load forgiven — told Insider she has "a new lease on her life," but she will not stop fighting until 45 million Americans holding $1.7 trillion in student debt can say the same.
"I'm just a sliver of the totality of borrowers drowning in crippling student debt," Ansell said. "I happen to have been fortunate enough in that of the millions of applications, somehow mine managed to land in the yes file."