If you have been waiting months—or even years—for your federal student loans to be forgiven under a program you qualified for, you are not alone. Across the country, thousands of borrowers are experiencing major delays in the processing of their debt relief.1
The reasons for these long wait times are a complex mix of legal challenges, administrative backlogs, and logistical issues within the Department of Education and its loan servicers.2
Here are the four primary causes behind the student loan forgiveness delays:
1. Massive Application Backlogs
The most straightforward reason for the delay is the overwhelming volume of applications currently pending review.3
- Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) Forgiveness: Millions of borrowers have applied for or recertified their Income-Driven Repayment plans, leading to a backlog that has, at times, exceeded one million applications.4 Every new application and required annual update adds to the queue.
- PSLF Buyback Program: The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Buyback initiative—a program that allows borrowers to receive credit for certain periods of deferment or forbearance—has its own backlog of tens of thousands of requests.5 Processing a single “Buyback” application is complicated and requires a manual, multi-step review, causing long wait times.
2. Legal Challenges and Program Pauses
Ongoing court battles have forced the government to pause or temporarily halt key forgiveness processes, leaving eligible borrowers in limbo.6
- Injunctions on IDR Plans: Legal challenges against new and existing Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) programs have led the Department of Education to temporarily pause all IDR loan forgiveness approvals.7 This freeze affects borrowers who have already reached their required 20 or 25 years of payments.
- Forbearance for Borrowers: As a result of one lawsuit, many borrowers enrolled in the SAVE Plan were placed into a special administrative forbearance.8 While this paused their payments, the time spent in this forbearance generally does not count toward their loan forgiveness progress for either IDR or PSLF, forcing them to seek complicated solutions like the PSLF Buyback.9
3. Staffing Shortages and Administrative Overload
The government’s system for managing student loans is struggling to keep up with the policy changes and application volume.10
- Reduced Personnel: Reports indicate that significant staff reductions and high turnover within the Federal Student Aid (FSA) office have hampered the department’s ability to process complicated forgiveness reviews quickly.11
- Loan Servicer Changes: The transition of millions of borrower accounts between loan servicers adds complexity and can cause further delays, as servicers must integrate old payment records and apply new rules to a borrower’s history.
What This Means for Borrowers
The continued delays create financial uncertainty.12 Most urgently, borrowers expecting IDR forgiveness face a looming “tax bomb” risk: the federal tax-free status for IDR forgiveness is set to expire after December 31, 2025.13 If their loans are not discharged before this date, the forgiven amount could become taxable income under current law.
While the administrative process struggles, experts continue to encourage eligible borrowers to apply for IDR and PSLF programs, ensuring their place in the queue for when processing fully resumes.14