Steve Weisman is a lawyer, college professor, author, and one of the country’s leading experts in cybersecurity, identity theft, and scams. See Steve’s other Con Watch articles.
Forty-eight million Americans owe close to $1.75 trillion in student loans. To put this into perspective, that figure is almost $412 billion more than all of the automobile loans being paid by Americans today.
The burden of student loan payments was significant prior to the pandemic, but the problem has only gotten worse in the last several years. In response, the federal government declared a moratorium on federal student loan repayments starting in March 2020, which has since been extended eight times. The latest extension is now slated to end on December 31.
In an effort to provide additional relief, President Biden announced his plan to forgive as much as $20,000 of federal student loan debt for borrowers who received Pell Grants and up to $10,000 for other federal student loan borrowers.
Approximately eight million borrowers may qualify to get their debt relief automatically because the Department of Education already has all of their relevant information on file. However, others may need to apply for debt relief. It is not expected that the applications will be available for at least a few weeks…
