The Education Department announced on Monday that it had canceled student loans for more than 150,000 borrowers, bringing the tally of Americans whose loans were forgiven under President Biden to over five million.
The Biden administration reached the milestone even though many of its more ambitious plans to overhaul the nation’s system for administering student debt faltered over the past two years, forcing the administration to slowly but steadily process applications for relief through established channels created by Congress.
The latest cancellations were most likely the administration’s final round of relief. They covered borrowers who have worked in public service for at least 10 years, students who had applied after being defrauded or misled by their school, and some students with disabilities.
With Monday’s authorization and 27 previous ones, the Biden administration has canceled more than $183 billion in outstanding student loans.
“Since Day 1 of my administration, I promised to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity, and I’m proud to say we have forgiven more student loan debt than any other administration in history,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.
Mr. Biden will leave office next week with many of his boldest ambitions for student debt reform stymied, after a wave of legal challenges brought by Republican attorneys general chipped away at plans that once envisioned student loan forgiveness for over 40 million people.
After its initial strategy of canceling debt through emergency powers tied to the Covid-19 pandemic was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2023, the administration attempted a variety of other tacks, including waiving interest on loans that had piled up for several decades.
Mr. Biden had also sought to sharply reduce the monthly payments that borrowers made on their loans with a generous new repayment plan, known as SAVE, that also qualified borrowers to have their full balances forgiven after making payments for a set period.
But opposition to those tactics mounted as well, and legal challenges brought by Republican states led to repeated setbacks, with federal judges stalling most of the administration’s programs even as borrowers flocked to enroll in them.
During a call with reporters on Monday, officials said they expected that the programs used to authorize the latest cancellations, including the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and borrower defense to repayment, would continue to be open to applicants into the next administration. But it was far from clear whether the Education Department would continue to administer those programs under the Trump administration.
Both President-elect Donald J. Trump and the America First Policy Institute, where his pick for education secretary, Linda McMahon, has served as a chair, have been intensely critical of the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness policies.
And while lawmakers would have to pass legislation to change or eliminate the programs in question, their implementation by the Education Department could be restricted or deprioritized as they were under Mr. Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
In recent months, officials have instead turned to celebrating the more limited progress they made using programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness to their full potential. After the program was enacted in 2007, bureaucratic obstacles and poor coordination made it almost impossible for borrowers to navigate. Just around 7,000 people had successfully applied for forgiveness under that law when Mr. Biden took office.
“The system was broken,” Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona told reporters on Monday. “And when these borrowers reached out for help, the previous administration showed little interest in fixing it.”
