Payments for federal student loans have been paused since March 2020, and after multiple extensions, they are currently scheduled to restart on September 1, 2022. President Biden has not said whether he plans to extend the pause again, or if he has made the decision to cancel up to $10,000 of student loans for borrowers.

But there’s a federal program that has already promised loan forgiveness to an estimated 9 million public service workers with federal student loans.

In 2007, Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, also known as the PSLF, to help incentivize people to work in the public sector. The program promised to forgive student loans for eligible employees after 120 payments over 10 years. But in reality, it rarely worked like that. 

In 2018, when the first wave of employees were due to qualify for forgiveness, the Department of Education reported that only around 1 percent of applications were approved. Tens of thousands of other applications were denied, mostly due to hard-to-understand requirements and administrative missteps.

To try and address this problem, last October, the Department of Education announced temporary reforms that they hope will make it easier for public sector workers to have their student loans forgiven. And the Department is urging people to apply (or even re-apply) for forgiveness with this waiver, before it expires at the end of this coming October.

Last week, Democratic House Representative Joe Courtney introduced a bill that would make many of the PSLF changes permanent.

In the meantime, there are still some obstacles. But some people are already seeing a degree of success.

For more on the PSLF, we spoke to Kat Welbeck, Director of Advocacy & Civil Rights Counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center… and a former student of mine at Princeton University.