Student Debt Relief for the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program (Direct Loans), the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program, the Federal Perkins Loan (Perkins) Program, and the Health Education Assistance Loan (HEAL) Program

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Parts 30 and 682</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2023-OPE-0123]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1840-AD93</RIN> <SUBJECT>Student Debt Relief for the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program (Direct Loans), the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program, the Federal Perkins Loan (Perkins) Program, and the Health Education Assistance Loan (HEAL) Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Postsecondary Education, Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Secretary proposes to amend the regulations related to the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA) to provide for the waiver of certain student loan debts. In this NPRM, the Department proposes regulations, in accordance with the Secretary's authority to waive repayment of a loan provided by the HEA, to provide targeted debt relief as part of efforts to address the burden of student loan debt. The proposed regulations would modify the Department's existing debt collection regulations to provide greater specificity regarding certain non-exhaustive situations in which the Secretary may exercise discretion to waive all or part of any debts owed to the Department. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We must receive your comments on or before May 17, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> For more information regarding submittal of comments, please see <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> . Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> However, if you require an accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your comments via <E T="03">Regulations.gov,</E> please contact Rene Tiongquico at (202) 453-7513 or by email at <E T="03">Rene.Tiongquico@ed.gov.</E> <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Please go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> to submit your comments electronically. Information on using <E T="03">Regulations.gov,</E> including instructions for finding a rule on the site and submitting comments, is available on the site under “FAQ.” In accordance with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2023 (Pub. L. 118-9), a summary of not more than 100 words in length of the proposed rule, in plain language, is posted on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> in the rulemaking docket: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/ED-2023-OPE-0123.</E> <E T="03">Privacy Note:</E> The Department's policy is to generally make comments received from members of the public available for public viewing on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, commenters should include in their comments only information about themselves that they wish to make publicly available. Commenters should not include in their comments any information that identifies other individuals or that permits readers to identify other individuals. If, for example, your comment describes an experience of someone other than yourself, please do not identify that individual or include information that would allow readers to identify that individual. The Department may not make comments that contain personally identifiable information (PII) about someone other than the commenter publicly available on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> for privacy reasons. This may include comments where the commenter refers to a third-party individual without using their name if the Department determines that the comment provides enough detail that could allow one or more readers to link the information to the third-party individual. If your comment refers to a third-party individual, please refer to the third-party individual anonymously to reduce the chance that information in your comment could be linked to the third party. For example, “a former student with a graduate level degree” does not provide information that identifies a third-party individual as opposed to “my sister, Jane Doe, had this experience while attending University X,” which does provide enough information to identify a specific third-party individual. For privacy reasons, the Department reserves the right to not make available on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> any information in comments that identifies other individuals, includes information that would allow readers to identify other individuals, or includes threats of harm to another person or to oneself. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For further information related to general waivers and length of time in repayment, contact Richard Blasen at (202) 987-0315 or by email at <E T="03">Richard.Blasen@ed.gov.</E> For further information related to current balances that exceed original amounts borrowed, contact Bruce Honer at (202) 987-0750 or by email at <E T="03">Bruce.Honer@ed.gov.</E> For further information related to waiver eligibility based on repayment plan and targeted debt relief, contact Vanessa Freeman at (202) 987-1336 or by email at <E T="03">Vanessa.Freeman@ed.gov.</E> For further information related to secretarial actions and Gainful Employment programs with low financial value, contact Rene Tiongquico at (202) 453-7513 or by email at <E T="03">Rene.Tiongquico@ed.gov.</E> For further information related to FFEL Program loans, contact Brian Smith at (202) 987-0385 or by email at <E T="03">Brian.Smith@ed.gov.</E> If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Summary</HD> Since 1980, the total cost to receive a four-year postsecondary credential has nearly tripled, even after accounting for inflation. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Pell Grants once covered nearly 80 percent of the cost of a four-year public college degree for students from low- and middle-income families, but now they only cover a third of those costs. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> This price growth has dramatically increased the need for students to secure student loans, particularly Federal student loans from the Department, to cover their educational costs. The gap between prices and income means that many students from low- and middle-income families have to borrow Federal student loans in addition to grants and out-of-pocket spending so they can earn a postsecondary credential. These trends have resulted in cumulative Federal loan debt of $1.6 trillion and rising for more than 43 million borrowers, which has placed a significant financial burden upon middle-income borrowers and has had an even more devastating impact on vulnerable low-income borrowers. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Trends in College Pricing 2023: Data in Excel. Table CP-2. Available at <E T="03">https://research.collegeboard.org/trends/college-pricing.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">https://www.cbpp.org/research/pell-grants-a-key-tool-for-expanding-college-access-and-economic-opportunity-need.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">https://studentaid.gov/data-center/student/portfolio; https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/student-debt-weighed-heavily-on-millions-even-before-pandemic.html; https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/consumer-finance/reports/cfi-sl-1-payments-resumption.pdf; https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2021/student-debt-crisis-for-older-americans.html; https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-equity-insights/gender-racial-disparities-student-loan-debt.</E> </FTNT> After convening the Student Loan Debt Relief negotiated rulemaking committee (Committee) and reaching consensus on various issues discussed in this NPRM, the Department proposes regulations, in accordance with the Secretary's authority to waive repayment of a loan provided by section 432(a) of the HEA, to provide debt relief targeted to address certain specific circumstances as part of a comprehensive effort to address the burden of Federal student loan debt. The proposed regulations would modify the Department's existing debt collection regulations to provide greater specificity regarding the Secretary's discretion to waive Federal student loan debt and specify the Secretary's authority to waive all or part of any debts owed to the Department based on a number of different circumstances, such as growth in a borrower's loan balance beyond what was owed upon entering repayment, the amount of time since the loan first entered repayment, whether the borrower meets certain criteria for loan forgiveness or discharge under existing authority, and whether a loan was obtained to attend an institution or program that was subject to secretarial actions, that closed prior to secretarial actions, or was associated with closed Gainful Employment programs with high debt-to-earnings rates or low median earnings. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Select Provisions of This Regulatory Action</HD> The Department proposes to amend subparts A, C, E, and F of 34 CFR part 30 and to add a new subpart G. The Department also proposes to amend part 682 by adding a new § 682.403. These proposed regulations, in accordance with the HEA, would specify the Secretary's discretionary authority to waive repayment of the following amounts: • The full amount by which the current outstanding balance on a loan exceeds the amount owed when the loan entered repayment for loans being repaid on any Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan if the borrower's income is at or below $120,000 if the borrower's filing status is single or married filing separately, $180,000 if a borrower files as head of household, or $240,000 if the borrower is married and files a joint Federal tax return or the borrower files as a qualifying surviving spouse (§ 30.81). • Up to $20,000 or ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 382k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━