Public Service Loan Forgiveness Borrowers Lose Credit After Education Department Recalculation
The Education Department recalculated payment counts for Public Service Loan Forgiveness borrowers this summer, and some lost months of credit toward the 120-payment threshold. The department says it was correcting technical errors from 2024, but has not said how many borrowers were affected.
Some Public Service Loan Forgiveness borrowers lost months of credit toward loan cancellation this summer after the Education Department recalculated payment counts to correct what it described as technical errors dating back to 2024.
PSLF cancels the remaining balance on federal student loans after 120 qualifying monthly payments made while working full time for a qualifying employer, such as a government agency or nonprofit organization.
The department said the recalculation corrected counter code errors that had produced inaccurate payment counts for some borrowers. Officials described the reversals as technical corrections rather than a change in policy.
The department has not disclosed how many borrowers were affected, which specific months were removed from payment counts, or whether any legitimately qualifying payments were pulled along with the errors.
For borrowers close to the 120-payment threshold, losing even a few months of credit could mean hundreds or thousands of dollars in additional payments they were not planning to make.
Borrowers who believe they were affected should check their payment count on StudentAid.gov and compare it against their own records. Federal rules allow credit for certain deferment and forbearance periods, including economic hardship deferment, military service, and administrative forbearance.
Advocacy groups are calling on the department to provide a full accounting of which borrowers were affected and to restore any payments that were incorrectly removed.
