Under Borrower Defense, Ed Dept. Forgave $17.2B in Student Loans
Susan H. Greenberg
October 25, 2024
The Department of Education had forgiven $17.2 billion in federal student loans for nearly 975,000 borrowers as of April 30, through a program that allows borrowers to seek relief if they’ve been misled or defrauded by their college, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found in a report released Thursday.
Under the borrower defense to repayment policy, students can apply for loan relief if they attended an institution that engaged in certain kinds of misconduct, such as misrepresenting graduates’ job and income prospects. The program has been on the books for years, but the department received few applications until 2015, when the for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges closed.
In the vast majority of cases cited in the GAO report, ED officials forgave the loans of individual borrowers whose claims of institutional misconduct they deemed credible. But they also approved group discharges for students who attended seven colleges found to have engaged in “widespread and pervasive” deceit.
