277,000 student-loan borrowers who have 'paid what they can afford' for at least a decade are getting $7.4 billion in debt wiped out

• Biden announced another $7.4 billion in student-debt relief for 277,000 borrowers.
• It impacts borrowers on the SAVE plan, along with others on income-driven repayment plans and PSLF.

Another batch of student-loan borrowers has been approved for debt cancellation.

On Friday, President Joe Biden and the Education Department announced that 277,000 more borrowers will get $7.4 billion in debt relief. It results from a new provision in the SAVE income-driven repayment plan that allows for a shorter timeline to loan forgiveness for some borrowers, along with ongoing fixes to other income-driven repayment plans and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

"Today we are helping 277,000 borrowers who have been making payments on their student loans for at least a decade," Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a statement. "They have paid what they can afford, and they have earned loan forgiveness for the balance of their loan."

Specifically, according to the Education Department's press release, $3.6 billion of the relief will go to 206,800 borrowers enrolled in SAVE. The provision allows relief for borrowers who originally borrowed $12,000 or less and have made as few as 10 years of qualifying payments, contrasting the 20-year threshold for other income-driven repayment plans.

Additionally, the rest of the relief is going to borrowers on income-driven repayment plans or PSLF as a result of the one-time account adjustments and administrative fixes to the plans to bring borrowers' payment counts up to date.

According to the Education Department, impacted borrowers will begin receiving emails on Friday informing them of their relief, and their servicers will process the relief in the coming weeks.

This latest batch of debt relief approvals comes just days after Biden announced new details for his broader attempt at student-loan forgiveness using the Higher Education Act of 1965. While the plan is still subject to change, the latest details outline relief intended to benefit over 30 million borrowers, including those whose balances have grown due to unpaid interest and those who have made at least 20 years of payments but have yet to receive relief.

The regulatory text for that broader plan is set to be published in the coming months, after which there will be a period for public comment. Biden's administration expects to implement the plan as early as this fall — but it faces uncertainty due to the possibility of legal challenges that could block the relief, as they did with Biden's first attempt at loan forgiveness.

Two groups of GOP state attorneys general have also filed separate lawsuits over the past few weeks to block the SAVE plan, calling the shortened timeline to relief unconstitutional.

Still, the administration is moving forward with more targeted efforts for debt cancellation through its fixes to repayment plans, recently announcing $1.2 billion in relief for 153,000 borrowers through the SAVE plan.

"From day one of my Administration, I promised to fight to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity," Biden said in a statement. "I will never stop working to cancel student debt — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us."