Turns out most people in public service jobs believe that they’re paying their way to loan forgiveness only to discover at some point in the process that they don’t qualify for one technical reason or another.
Debbie Baker, a music teacher in Oklahoma’s public schools, paid her student loans off for 10 years, all the while believing she was on her way to debt forgiveness.
“Year after year I would tell them, ‘Now I’m going after public service loan forgiveness,’ and they’d say, ‘Okay. Well you can’t apply until 2017,’” Baker said, about her conversations with Navient, one of the country’s largest student loan servicers.
These are the public service loan forgiveness requirements. Often, if you don’t meet one of them, you can make changes so that you do.
- Your loans must be federal direct loans.
- Your employer must be a government organization at any level, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization or some other type of not-for-profit organization that provides public service.
- By the end, you need to have made 120 qualifying, on-time payments in an income-driven repayment plan or the standard repayment plan.
In July, after she had made 10 years of payments, she tried to certify her forgiveness, but was told that she didn’t qualify because she had the wrong type of federal student loan.
“I almost threw up,” Baker said. “I’ve been teaching 18 years and I still don’t make $40,000 — and now I have to start all over.”
Even consumer advocates with low expectations of the program were surprised by the newly released data.
“I don’t believe there were only 96 people who owe money on their federal loans and were working in public service over the last 10 years,” said Persis Yu, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group.
“To have a student loan system where to receive the benefits of it you have to be perfect is not a reasonable expectation to set up for 43 million borrowers,” she said.
If you’ve made the 120 qualifying payments for public service loan forgiveness, we want to hear from you. Please email: [email protected]
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