74,000 student-loan borrowers are getting $5 billion debt wiped out in Biden's latest batch of repayment reforms

• Biden's administration has approved another $5 billion in student-debt relief for 74,000 borrowers.
• The relief is going to public servants and those on income-driven repayment who made their qualifying payments.

More student-loan borrowers are on track to get debt relief following President Joe Biden's repayment reforms.

On Friday, Biden announced that his administration approved another 74,000 borrowers for $5 billion in debt relief. It adds to the thousands of borrowers who have already benefited from the Education Department's one-time account adjustment for those who have completed qualifying payments on income-driven repayment plans and relief through a limited-time waiver for borrowers in Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

"Of the 74,000 borrowers approved for relief today, nearly 44,000 of them are teachers, nurses, firefighters, and other individuals who earned forgiveness after 10 years of public service, and close to 30,000 of them are people who have been in repayment for at least 20 years but never got the relief they earned through income-driven repayment plans," Biden said in a statement.

"My Administration is able to deliver relief to these borrowers — and millions more — because of fixes we made to broken student loan programs that were preventing borrowers from getting relief they were entitled to under the law," he said.

The Education Department previously said it would continue evaluating borrowers' accounts every other month to determine if they meet qualifying payments to receive loan forgiveness. In December, for example, the department approved another $5 billion in relief for 80,000 borrowers on PSLF and income-driven repayment plans.

The relief comes as millions of borrowers continue to transition back into repayment. After an over three-year pause, interest began accruing on borrowers' balances in September, with bills becoming due in October.

However, millions have encountered challenges with repayment due to the influx of borrowers reentering the system at once. For example, the Education Department previously found that all four federal student-loan servicers failed to send on-time billing statements to borrowers, resulting in the department withholding varying amounts of pay from each of the servicers as punishment.

It also found that some borrowers received inaccurate billing statements and were improperly taken out of forbearance. As a result, the department released an accountability framework to ensure servicers were fulfilling their contractual obligations. At the same time, the Education Department is moving forward not only with account adjustments, but a new plan to get more debt relief to borrowers after the Supreme Court struck down Biden's first attempt.

"This level of debt relief is unparalleled, and we have no intention of slowing down," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a December statement.