Biden has another plan for mass student loan forgiveness. It could be excruciatingly long

USA Today

Alia Wong and Nirvi Shah

July 18, 2023

Last summer, in the space of about 20 minutes, President Joe Biden laid out his plan to forgive student loan debt for more than 40 million borrowers.

On Tuesday, roughly a year later and with that plan undone by the Supreme Court, a very different process for erasing debt on such a wide scale begins. It’s expected to take several months, if not longer. The resulting rule may also face legal challenges, which could drag things out further.

The administration is leveraging the country’s primary higher education law to write a regulation that will allow the government to cancel some student debt.

Much is unknown about exactly what the process will look like and how far a new loan forgiveness plan would go, although the undertaking will be familiar to experts in higher education.