Check Your Email—36,000 Student Loan Borrowers Should Have Been Notified of Automatic Forgiveness

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Tens of thousands of borrowers whose colleges were accused of misconduct were supposed to learn by Monday that their student loan debt would be erased.

About 36,000 federal student loan borrowers who applied for loan forgiveness because their college was accused of misconduct should have received notice of full forgiveness by June 15 if the following applies:

The Project on Predatory Student Lending, the legal organization that represented borrowers in the Sweet v. McMahon case, confirmed late last week that the Department of Education had begun sending automatic forgiveness notifications.1

Borrowers who attended a school accused of misconduct often struggled to find well-paying jobs and repay their loans after graduating. The discharges free up money these borrowers can put toward other essentials.

These automatic forgiveness notifications stem from a 2019 lawsuit, in which the Education Department allegedly delayed processing thousands of borrower defense claims. Earlier this year, the Education Department failed to clear its backlog of borrower defense applications, leading to automatic forgiveness for thousands of borrowers included in the lawsuit.

That includes about 164,000 borrowers who attended one of the more than 150 colleges the Department of Education identified as very likely to have participated in misconduct. Those who applied for a loan discharge between June 23, 2022, and Nov. 16, 2022, should have already received notice of automatic forgiveness by March 30.

Eligible borrowers should check their spam, junk, or deleted email folders for a message from the Department of Education (noreply@studentaid.gov).

For help, you can email the Project on Predatory Student Lending at info@ppsl.org with your name, email, borrower defense number, and application date.2