ARKANSAS, USA — On July 19, the U.S. Department of Education released state-by-state data on the number of borrowers eligible for automatic loan relief.
This comes after the Biden administration announced on Friday that more than 800,000 student loan borrowers will have their remaining federal student loans forgiven over the next few weeks.
New data shows how many borrowers and the total amount that is eligible for relief in each state. In Arkansas, the borrower count is 6,940 and the debt eligible for discharge (in millions) is $342.60.
The U.S. Department of Education said in a statement that $39 billion in federal student loans was expected to be forgiven through the initiative.
Since the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration, the Department has approved more than $116 billion in student loan forgiveness for over 3.4 million borrowers.
“My Administration is delivering on that commitment. Starting today, over 800,000 student loan borrowers who have been repaying their loans for 20 years or more will see $39 billion of their loans discharged because of steps my Administration took to fix failures of the past," Biden said in a statement.
The new initiative was announced last week by Biden's education department and came on the heels of a major Supreme Court loss, when the conservative-majority court struck down the president's plan to offer mass debt forgiveness to tens of millions of Americans.
The administration said the debt forgiveness is being offered to correct errors from previous administrations. Under the Higher Education Act and Dept. of Ed. regulations, they argue, a borrower is equivalent for forgiveness after around 240 or 300 payments — the equivalent of 20 to 25 years on a standard repayment plan.
The Department will continue to identify and notify borrowers who reach the applicable forgiveness thresholds (240 or 300 qualifying monthly payments, depending on their repayment plan and type of loan) every two months until next year when all borrowers who are not yet eligible for forgiveness will have their payment counts updated.