The public service loan forgiveness fix isn't going well

The public service loan forgiveness fix isn't going well

Congress authorized a $350 million fund to help fix a popular, but troubled student loan forgiveness program earlier this year.

However, the remedy isn't going too well.

Nearly 90 percent of applicants for the so-called temporary expanded public service loan forgiveness program have been denied, according to a letter from the Education Department to Sen. Tim Kaine, provided to CNBC.When Congress authorized a $350 million fund to help fix a popular but troubled student loan forgiveness program earlier this year, Michael Sonn was excited. Finally, he thought, he might be debt-free.

However, the remedy isn't going too well.

Nearly 90 percent of applicants who applied for the so-called temporary expanded public service loan forgiveness (TEPSLF) program have been denied, according to a letter from the Education Department sent to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., in response to an inquiry from the senator about how the program was working. Kaine's office provided the letter to CNBC.

Sonn is one of the many public servants denied for the original program — and now denied again from the fund created to help fix the original program.

After more than a decade of student loan payments, Sonn had learned he didn't qualify for public service loan forgiveness because he was enrolled in the wrong repayment plan. He's far from alone — 99 percent of the program's applicants have been rejected, recent Education Department data show.

Public service loan forgiveness (PSLF) allows certain not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years of on-time payments.

But most people, like Sonn, are rejected because they don't fulfill one of the requirements. Consumer advocates say that student loan servicers have failed to guide borrowers to the consumer protection.

Congress' fix to the program earlier this year addressed people who had been denied the loan forgiveness simply because they had been repaying their debt in a disqualifying plan. Those people were offered a second chance at having their debt canceled.

That's why Sonn was hopeful, and quickly reapplied. However, he was told he still wasn't eligible because he hasn't made enough payments. "That doesn't make sense," said Sonn, who works for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. "I've been paying for 12 years now."

But then he learned that, even though he graduated in 2006 and has spent his entire career in public service, he had consolidated his loans in 2012 — and that reset the clock on his loan forgiveness.

That means the soonest he will be eligible for loan forgiveness is in 2022.

By then, he said his student loan servicer told him, Congress' fund will likely be depleted. "It feels like the hoops were put in place to not pay out in the end," Sonn said.

It's the responsibility of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to implement Congress' fund to fix some of the flaws of the public service loan forgiveness program, said Kaine.

"I hope the Trump Administration will turn things around by creating a simple process that gives fair consideration to the teachers, military personnel, law enforcement officers, and other public servants who apply for this debt relief," he said.

Liz Hill, press secretary at the U.S. Department of Education, said they implement programs Congress creates.

"[These] are poorly constructed programs, the rules of which are highly complex and difficult for students to navigate," Hill wrote in an email. "We are working to make it as straightforward as the rules allow."

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