Biden Administration Cancels Another $7.7 Billion in Student Loans

President Biden announced on Wednesday the cancellation of $7.7 billion in student loans held by 160,000 borrowers, building on his strategy of chipping away at college debt by tweaking existing programs as his administration pursues a larger forgiveness plan.

Many borrowers in this round — who qualified through public service loan forgiveness, the president’s SAVE plan or another income-driven repayment plan — have already begun receiving emails notifying them of their approvals, the Education Department said in a statement.

The steady drumbeat of loan forgiveness announcements from the White House this year has become a centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s re-election pitch, in which he has consistently described overcoming the cost of education as a primary hurdle for working families.

“From Day 1 of my administration, I promised to fight to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” the president said in a statement.

The announcement marks another small step forward on an issue that has long bedeviled the president. Even as he has canceled more student debt than has any of his predecessors, he has fallen far short of the mass debt forgiveness he promised, disappointing many of the younger voters who overwhelmingly supported him in 2020 but have shown signs of drifting away.

The Biden administration has now canceled about $167 billion in loans for 4.75 million borrowers, or roughly one in 10 federal loan holders, wiping away $35,000 in debt on average. The president has set forward a much larger goal: forgiving debt for nearly 30 million borrowers as soon as this fall. But the broader program is still being finalized and could fall victim to legal challenges, as Mr. Biden’s first attempt at mass debt cancellation did.