Student-loan borrowers can now submit comments to Biden’s Education Department on its plans to improve debt relief

• Biden’s Education Department released a list of proposals to reform the student-loan industry.

• The public can now submit comments on those proposals for the next 30 days.

• The reforms included improvements to targeted loan forgiveness programs, like PSLF.

President Joe Biden’s Education Department wants to know what you think of its plans to reform the student-loan industry.

Two weeks ago, the department released 750 pages of proposals on student loans it wants to implement, including easing access to targeted loan forgiveness programs for public servants and those defrauded by for-profit schools, along with preventing interest capitalization.

Those proposals are part of the regulatory process — a years-long process that involves negotiated rulemaking with experts and stakeholders that generated the department’s proposals, with final implementation by July 2023.

“Student loan benefits also should not be so hard to get that borrowers never actually benefit from them,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement following the proposals’ release. “The Biden-Harris Administration is determined to build a more accessible, affordable, and accountable student loan system. These proposed regulations will protect borrowers and save them time, money, and frustration, and will hold their colleges responsible for wrongdoing.”

As of Wednesday, the proposals entered a 30 day period of public comment, in which anyone can submit a comment on the changes the department put forth. The process is simple: click on this link to read the proposals in question. The option to submit a comment is in the top left corner, and your deadline for submission is August 12.

As Insider previously reported, a major focus of the proposals are reforms to student-loan forgiveness programs. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which is intended to forgive student debt for government and nonprofit workers after ten years of qualifying payments, has faced years of flaws that have blocked eligible borrowers from relief, and the department wants to ensure the program is more accessible. The same goes for the “borrower defense to repayment” process — borrowers who believe they were defrauded by for-profit schools can submit a borrower defense claim for relief, and the department wants to broaden the scope of school misconduct to qualify for claim approval.

Meanwhile, Biden is also in the process of deciding whether he will implement broad student-loan forgiveness for federal borrowers. He is reportedly considering $10,000 in relief for borrowers making under $150,000 a year, and his officials have said an announcement will be made before the pause on student-loan payments expires after August 31.

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