The Biden Administration has announced that Pell Grant recipients will receive debt relief of up to $20,000 and non-Pell Grant recipients will receive debt relief of up to $10,000 for students with loans with the US Department of Education.
Who is eligible for debt cancellation?
- For individuals, your annual income must be below $125,000, for married couples or heads of households, it must be below $250,000.
- A student who received a Pell Grant in college and meets the income thresholds is eligible for debt cancellation of up to $20,000.
- A student who didn’t receive a Pell Grant in college and meets the income thresholds is eligible for debt cancellation of up to $10,000.
How much debt relief will you actually receive?
- You are only entitled to relief up to the amount of your outstanding debt.
- An individual who is eligible to receive $20,000 in debt relief but has a balance of $10,000 remaining will only receive $10,000 in relief.
How to apply for Student Loan Forgiveness?
- Approximately 8 million borrowers might qualify for relief automatically since relevant income data is already available to the US Education Department.
- The US Department of Education will launch a simple application in the coming weeks if it doesn’t have your income data – or if you don’t know if it does.
- The application will be available before 31st December 2022. To get notified when the application is open, please sign up at the Department of Education subscription page.
What is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF)?
- If you work full-time for the federal, state, tribal, or local government, the military, or a qualifying non-profit, you can qualify to have your federal student loans forgiven after 120 payments.
- Through temporary changes ending October 31, 2022, borrowers can now receive credit for repayments made in the past that would not otherwise qualify for PSLF.
- The treatment will not be available to enrollments after Nov. 1, 2022. Sign up today if you are a borrower. To learn more and to apply, please visit PSLF.gov.
How do I know if I received a Pell Grant?
- To begin the process, interested borrowers must log into their StudentAid.gov accounts using their Federal Student Aid (FSA) identification. You will need to create an FSA account and ID if they do not have one already.
- When you visit the site, you’ll find a section called “My Aid,” which displays both borrowers’ loan balances and grants they received as students. Those breakdowns of grants are where students can find information about the Pell Grants they received.
- Another option is to check with the financial aid officer of your former school. It is possible that a financial aid officer could provide Pell Grant information from their records.
