President Joe Biden’s administration has announced it will automatically cancel education debt for over 800,000 borrowers bringing the total relief to about $39 billion. The update comes after the Supreme Court struck down the president’s previous student loan forgiveness plan, which would have delivered relief to about 37 million people.

Millions more people will have their loans adjusted as part of the program according to the New York Times. That process will continue into next year.

Student Loan Forgiveness

This forgiveness applies to borrowers who enrolled in income-driven repayment plans. Under those repayment plans, borrowers get debt canceled after they have made payments for 20 years or 25 years. It all depends on when they borrowed, and their loan and plan type. This milestone plan is executed through “fixes” to the count of monthly payments borrowers have made thus far.

Previously, payments that were made by borrowers under these repayment plans should have pushed them to be closer to getting debt-free. Many of those payments were not accounted for. An NPR investigation in 2022 looked into the failures of the program. The plan announced Friday was put in place to rectify the program’s shortcomings.

“For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress toward forgiveness,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement Friday. “By fixing past administrative failures, we are ensuring everyone gets the forgiveness they deserve.”

This move is just the start of a very lengthy process to forgive student loan debt nationwide.

″[M]ake no mistake — over 804,000 people are receiving relief with this action because of 804,000 failures — and this is only the tip of the iceberg,” Persis Yu, deputy executive director at the Student Borrower Protection Center said in a statement. “Working people have been made collateral damage by a dysfunctional student loan system.”

Qualifying borrowers who have met the necessary threshold for forgiveness will be notified. Types of loans covered include Direct Loans or Federal Family Education Loans held by the Education Department, including Parent PLUS loans.