It's news in that they're actually unblocking programs which actually had been long legislatively approved paths for forgiveness and were already supposed to have been operating to this end for years.

It's not news in that these are not new categories of, nor expansions of previous commitments to student loan forgiveness.

When you look at the overall stats of student loans, a increasing number of them (a majority!) look like they will be never paid off over their lifetime, and we are still in a situation where if an individual has a small loan problem it's the responsibility of an individual. But if an entire class or multiple-generations (or a big enough individual loan), has problems, then it's a problem for the bank - in this case the US gov't and an even bigger problem of our overall society and providing an sustainable economically competitive skilled labor pool.

It used to be that for PSLF you had to make 120 sequential "on-time" payments and if your loan provider claimed (correctly or incorrectly) that one of them was late then the clock would reset, making it next to impossible for anyone to claim the benefit. A 10-year clock that can be reset at any time by the bank isn't good.

I believe they fixed it (possibly temporarily) so that the clock no longer resets.

This is a partial fix. The full fix would be to have PLSF pay out incrementally, say 10% after each 12 payments.

> Several thousand borrowers with older loans will also receive forgiveness through income-driven repayment (IDR) forgiveness, plus another 3.6 million borrowers will receive at least three years of additional credit toward IDR forgiveness, the Education Department said in a statement.

I think this is the actual news. Although it doesn't state what the selection process is.

I think historically, the number of loans actually forgiven by the PSLF program has been very very low, even for people that qualify.

Given it was actively blocked during the previous administration? The PSLF Program actually working as intended is news.