Some student-loan borrowers have just 2 months left to benefit from temporary debt relief. Here's what they need to do.

• The Education Department plans to complete account adjustments for student-loan borrowers by July 1.
• This means borrowers without direct federal loans will need to consolidate by April 30.

Time is running out for some student-loan borrowers to benefit from a limited-time debt cancellation reform.

Over the summer, President Joe Biden's Education Department announced it would be carrying out account adjustments to evaluate which borrowers have made the qualifying amount of payments on income-driven repayment plans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness but have yet to receive relief.

The department said it will evaluate accounts every other month to determine which borrowers qualify for debt relief, and according to updated Federal Student Aid guidance, the department expects all adjustments to be completed by July 1.

"In general, it takes at least 60 days to process a direct consolidation loan application and to disburse the new loan. This means that if you want to consolidate your loan(s) in order to get the benefit of the adjustment, you should submit a loan consolidation application by April 30, 2024," the guidance said.

Borrowers who will receive the account adjustment automatically must be in the federal direct loan program or the Federal Family Education Loan program with loans held by the Education Department. Other borrowers who have loans in the FFEL program that are commercially held would need to consolidate into the direct loan program to receive relief.

Thousands of borrowers have so far had their balances wiped out thanks to the adjustments. Most recently, Biden announced 74,000 borrowers were receiving $5 billion in relief — 44,000 of whom were public servants, with the other 30,000 having made at least 20 years of payments on income-driven repayment plans but were still waiting for loan forgiveness.

"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," Biden said in a statement.

The adjustments have been coming at a challenging time for many borrowers. After an over three-year pause, federal payments started becoming due again in October, and the transition back into repayment has been far from seamless. The Education Department has withheld varying amounts of pay from all four major federal servicers over failure to send on-time billing statements to borrowers, and it released an accountability framework to bolster its oversight over servicers as borrowers pay their bills.

At the same time, the Education Department is in the process of crafting its second attempt at more expansive relief for borrowers. On February 22 and 23, it will meet with stakeholders for the fourth time to negotiate the text of debt relief under the Higher Education Act of 1965. After the Supreme Court struck down Biden's first attempt at debt relief, the department announced it would be pursuing a new route that requires it to undergo negotiations with stakeholders.

While there are five groups of borrowers the department has already outlined to prioritize for relief, the fourth negotiation session will focus on including a category for borrowers experiencing various forms of economic hardship.