It looks like things haven't improved much for student loan borrowers: 99.5% of people who applied for public service loan forgiveness have been rejected.
Here's what you need to know and what to do about it.
Student Loan Forgiveness: Debt Statistics
The U.S. Department of Education released the latest statistics for public service loan forgiveness:
As of September 30, 2018, 41,221 student loan borrowers submitted 49,669 applications for public service loan forgiveness.
Of that total, approximately 44,700 applications have been processed.
Some student loan borrowers will get another chance to qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
Congress has set aside $350 million to help fix what lawmakers have called a "glitch" in the enrollment process.
Teachers, social workers, public defenders and others who work for the government or non-profits can qualify for student loan forgiveness after making 10 years of payments. But many who thought they were on track for forgiveness have since found out they were in a repayment plan that makes them ineligible for debt relief.
In October, I wrote a column about Jed Shafer, a teacher in Oregon who found himself on the wrong end of the student loan repayment bureaucracy.
Mr. Shafer thought he was following the rules to qualify for the public service loan forgiveness program, and spent years communicating carefully with the loan servicers who collected his payments on behalf of the federal government. But it turns out he hadn’t been doing it correctly after all.
More than 400,000 student loan borrowers may have placed their faith in a government program with an uncertain future.
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program promises to cancel any remaining student debt for those who work for the government or nonprofits if they have been making on-time payments for 10 years. Many teachers, public defenders, Peace Corps workers, and law enforcement officers fit the qualifications.
House Republicans are planning to propose a bill this week that would bring about drastic changes to federal loans servicing and higher education policy, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The bill is part of a push to provide students with more skills in a modern labor market, but would also do away with programs meant to ease students' borrowing burdens.
When President Trump rolled out his recent budget proposal, it made some cuts that were always going to cause controversy. For one thing, his plan would slash subsidized student loan repayment plans, and let the government crack down on missed payments. To left-wing politicians who think the state should hand out more subsidies, this might as well have been Armageddon.
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