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Biden-Harris Administration Approves Additional $5.8 Billion in Student Debt Relief for 78,000 Public Service Workers
U.S. Department of Education
March 21, 2024
President Biden will email an additional 380,000 public service workers thanking them for their service and notifying them they are on track to have their debt cancelled through PSLF within two years
The Biden-Harris Administration announced today the approval of $5.8 billion in additional student loan debt relief for 77,700 borrowers. These approvals are the result of fixes made by the Administration to Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). Today’s announcement brings the total loan forgiveness approved by the Biden-Harris Administration to $143.6 billion for 3.96 million Americans. This action builds on President Biden and his Administration’s efforts to provide debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible.
“For too long, our nation’s teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters, and other public servants faced logistical troubles and trap doors when they tried to access the debt relief they were entitled to under the law. With this announcement, the Biden-Harris Administration is showing how we’re taking further steps not only to fix those trap doors, but also to expand opportunity to many more Americans,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “Today, more than 100 times more borrowers are eligible for PSLF than there were at the beginning of the Administration. The Biden Administration is turning a promise broken under our predecessor into a promise kept.”
The debt relief announced today includes borrowers who have benefitted from the Biden-Harris Administration’s limited PSLF waiver as well as regulatory improvements made to the program by the Administration. Total relief through PSLF is now $62.5 billion for 871,000 borrowers since October 2021. Prior to the Biden-Harris Administration’s fixes to PSLF, only about 7,000 borrowers had ever received forgiveness.
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How Perceptions of College Value Play Out on Social Media
Inside Higher Ed
Jessica Blake
March 21, 2024
A scan of 13,000 social media comments discussing the value of going to college shows that 93 percent of them reflected negative or neutral views, a recent report finds.
The study by Campus Sonar uses a research methodology known as social listening or social intelligence to expand the analysis of public views on the value of higher education.
The findings largely reinforce a trend observed in other more traditional survey-based reports: that confidence in the value of a college degree is declining. But Liz Gross, founder and chief executive officer of Campus Sonar, said the study adds a new level of depth.
“We don’t just have a yes or no … answer to a question, we have the full context in which people are expressing experiences or beliefs related to the topic that we’re studying,” Gross said. “So even though there was a strong, negative or neutral bent to the conversation, we were able to dive into the context qualitatively and see where there are bright spots.”
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Read MoreAnother Delay for Revised TPS Expansion Guidance
On Ed Tech
Phil Hill
March 20, 2024
The ever-changing plans from the Department of Education on display
Two of the biggest questions in EdTech center around the plans for the US Department of Education (ED) and whether / when it will release revised guidance on two items targeting the Online Program Management (OPM) market.
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The third-party servicer (TPS) guidance released in February 2023 was created to rein in OPM companies but was written in a way to pull in most of EdTech in the US. Given the increasingly global nature of EdTech, that action generated massive pushback that led to ED pulling back the guidance. When will it release revised guidance?
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The bundled services exception was released in 2011 and underpins OPM tuition revenue-sharing models. ED has stated that it is reviewing that guidance and considering whether to rescind it. If done, that action would blow up the OPM market and cause hundreds of contracts to be rewritten, and a redefinition of the market itself.