The AFT Fights Back on Student Debt

For over a decade, the AFT has been at the forefront of helping our members access federal student debt relief, advocating for improvements to existing debt relief programs, and fighting to expand access so that desperately needed relief reaches more people.* Our efforts have

• improved Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and income-driven repayment,
• held student loan servicers accountable for poor servicing,
• led to hundreds of our members receiving, on average, $61,500 of student debt forgiveness,
• helped amplify the success stories and challenges of our members on the national stage, and
• enabled our members to plan for their futures with greater financial stability and support their families without the overwhelming burden of student loans.

Lawsuits filed by the AFT against Navient and former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos were key to forcing the US Department of Education to make changes to the PSLF program that, prior to 2021, only granted loan forgiveness to 2 percent of applicants. The settlements of these lawsuits contributed to the PSLF waiver and the income-driven repayment account adjustment, helping people who previously had been denied loan forgiveness because of bad information and negligent servicing the opportunity to have their loans forgiven. Because of these changes and other improvements, more than 4.7 million people have now received over $168 billion in debt cancellation, including over 945,000 who have had more than $69 billion forgiven through PSLF.

The AFT also pushed the US Department of Education to improve access to PSLF for contingent faculty in higher education by changing how it determines if employees work full time. Before these changes were implemented in 2023, higher education employers had wide latitude in how to count the hours of part-time instructors, often only counting hours in the classroom toward the hours needed for PSLF, depriving part-time faculty of the chance for debt relief. Starting in July 2023, the department implemented a contact-hour multiplier that requires colleges and universities to multiply course contact hours by a minimum of 3.35 to determine the total hours worked by part-time instructors. This means that any instructor teaching the equivalent of three three-credit courses now qualifies as full-time for PSLF. It also marks the first time that there has been a national standard for how to count the hours worked by part-time faculty.

The AFT has worked with state legislatures to put in place consumer protections like the Student Loan Borrowers Bill of Rights, which have provided avenues for borrowers to hold loan servicers accountable for poor servicing and bad information. We have continued advocating for further improvements with both state and federal governments, including broad-based debt cancellation and holding servicers like MOHELA accountable for poor servicing that is costing borrowers thousands of dollars and denying them promised debt forgiveness.

–Mariame Toure, assistant director in the AFT’s Research, Strategic Initiatives, and Economic Security Department

*For details, see AFT's Fight for Student Debt Forgiveness, available at go.aft.org/84p. (return to article)