President Biden’s Complete Track Record on Student Loan Forgiveness

Former President Joe Biden campaigned on the promise of student loan debt forgiveness, but in practice, his administration offered a mixed bag of successes and failures.

Most notably, Biden’s widespread debt forgiveness plan, first proposed in August 2022, failed in the 11th hour due to a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The court declared the former president did not have the legal authority to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans per borrower through the HEROES Act, much to the disappointment of the 26 million Americans who applied or were automatically eligible for one-time forgiveness.

However, despite this high-profile loss, Biden celebrated numerous victories in the fight against the debt crisis.

By the time he left office in January 2025, Biden’s administration approved debt cancellation for 5.3 million borrowers totaling $188.8 billion in forgiveness since taking office in 2021. That far outpaces any student loan debt forgiveness from any previous administration and is roughly equivalent to the GDP of Ukraine in 2024.

Biden proposed a plan in August 2022 that would have canceled up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for most borrowers and up to $20,000 for those who received a Pell Grant while in college. His plan would only have applied to a borrower making less than $125,000 per year or couples with a joint income below $250,000.

This proposal, however, never made it to the finish line.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 30, 2023, that Biden’s debt forgiveness plan was unconstitutional.

The court’s decision ultimately came down to whether the president had the authority to erase student loan debt using powers granted by the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act).

The majority decision stated that while the act allows the president to modify the federal student loan system during an emergency, it does not allow the Department of Education (ED) to conjure new policy whole cloth.

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were the only judges who opposed the court’s decision.

Stephanie Hall, senior director of higher education policy at the Center for American Progress (CAP), told BestColleges she doesn’t believe the Supreme Court’s actions will reflect negatively on Biden’s legacy on student loan debt relief. That’s a mark the court itself will have to bear in the eyes of the general public.

Biden wasted little time in pivoting.

The same day the Supreme Court revealed the decision, the Biden administration announced a “Plan B” attempt at providing widespread federal student loan debt relief. This time, ED would lean on powers granted through a process known as negotiated rulemaking to reach borrowers.

This plan was short-lived. Following court challenges and President Donald Trump’s reelection, Biden abandoned the Plan B attempt on Dec. 26, 2024. ED cited “operational challenges” as the reason.

The proposal would have covered the following groups of borrowers:

Before he spiked the plan, Hall said Biden’s Plan B forgiveness plan would be what people remember when they think about Biden’s track record on loan forgiveness.

“To me — and I might just be flying high after negotiations ended so well — I think that’s going to be his legacy,” she said. “It will be felt in very tangible ways for student loan borrowers.”

Less than a year later, that legacy looks very different.

Biden quickly took aim at for-profit colleges and universities, as many of his debt forgiveness actions have targeted former students at these institutions.

The Biden administration agreed to settlement terms in mid-2022 for a case involving 200,000 borrowers and 155 (mostly) for-profit institutions.

The case — Sweet v. Cardona — stems from a backlog of borrower defense to repayment claims. Borrower defense allows federal student loan borrowers to request relief if they feel their college or university defrauded them. However, ED stopped processing borrower defense claims under President Donald Trump’s first administration, creating a massive backlog of claims.

Borrowers filed a class-action lawsuit against ED in 2019, and the department later settled.

Students who attended any of the 155 institutions listed in the settlement with borrower defense claims pending as of June 22, 2022, qualified for complete forgiveness. ED also promised to decide another 64,000 pending claims using standards favorable to the borrowers, according to the settlement.

In addition to the settlement, ED has granted piecemeal debt forgiveness for former students at other for-profit institutions.

Generally, these schools exhibited some signs of predatory or unscrupulous behavior, according to the department. They were often also spurred by an influx of borrower defense claims directed at the college or university.

The federal government has a handful of federal student loan debt forgiveness programs, but many of these programs had gone underutilized for decades.

Biden seemingly made it a higher education priority to change that fact.

One of the first debt forgiveness acts Biden initiated after taking office was creating a limited waiver for borrowers seeking debt cancellation through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. PSLF rewards public servants who work for at least 10 years at a nonprofit or government agency with complete forgiveness of federal student loan debt.

However, before Biden took office, the program had gone underutilized.

That was largely because borrowers needed to be part of the Direct Loan program to benefit from PSLF. The waiver allowed people to consolidate their loans into the Direct Loan program and have past payments counted toward the timeline to forgiveness.

Near the end of the waiver program, ED said approximately 236,000 borrowers benefit from the waiver. It waived more than $14 billion in student loan debt as a result and continues to grant PSLF forgiveness.

Biden later rolled out a one-time account adjustment for borrowers on an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan. IDR plans bring monthly payments down for low- and middle-income borrowers with the promise of debt elimination after 20-25 years of repayment.

Similar to PSLF, many borrowers hadn’t seen the full benefits of IDR due to the program’s complexity.

The one-time account adjustment benefited borrowers who made late or partial payments on their loans, were in extended forbearance, or spent time in deferment. These instances would be counted toward the timeline to forgiveness.

Hall said the IDR account adjustments have snagged prominent headlines. So while the average American may not be as familiar with Biden’s other student debt relief actions, many are acutely aware of what he has done for borrowers on IDR plans.

“It’s risen to the level that the general public is aware,” she said.

Approximately one year after launching the account adjustment, ED revealed that it helped erase $39 billion in loan debt for 804,000 borrowers. As of December 2024, the department has erased $78.5 billion in debt for 1.1 million borrowers through PSLF.

For reference, only 7,000 people had received PSLF debt relief prior to Biden taking office.

Borrowers with a commercially managed Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) or Perkins loan had until April 30, 2024, to consolidate and benefit from the IDR waiver. The Biden administration later extended the deadline to June 30, 2024.

The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan — Biden’s new IDR plan — launched in July 2023.

The SAVE plan offers significantly lower monthly payments compared to existing IDR plans. On top of that, it also provides a pathway to forgiveness before the standard 20 or 25 years of repayment that accompanies other IDR plans.

Those who originally borrowed $12,000 or less in student loans qualify for automatic debt forgiveness after 10 years of making payments. For every $1,000 borrowed above $12,000, a borrower must add one year to the timeline for forgiveness.

ED announced in February that it would discharge $1.2 billion in federal student loans, benefitting 153,000 borrowers, through this mechanism. The department announced another $3.6 billion in forgiveness for nearly 207,000 SAVE borrowers in mid-April and another $613 million in late May.

The SAVE plan is currently on hold due to legal challenges, and those enrolled in SAVE were placed in forbearance. Some higher education experts anticipate that President Trump will dissolve this IDR plan.

Through a bureaucratic process known as negotiated rulemaking, Biden’s administration overhauled additional debt forgiveness programs since taking office.

ED expanded the list of people who could benefit from PSLF, much to the benefit of teachers and adjunct faculty at public colleges and universities. The department’s proposed changes in December 2021 also added to the list of deferments and forbearances that a borrower could be in and still qualify toward the timeline to forgiveness.

During that same negotiated rulemaking session, ED expanded the scope of the following programs:

ED had forgiven $18.7 billion for 633,000 borrowers with permanent disability by the time he left office.

The borrower defense rule was held up in the courts but ultimately made its way to becoming part of the new official regulations.