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PSLF Update — October 2020
A Quarter-Billion Dollars in Student Loan Forgiveness.
As I’ve mentioned in my past few articles, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program has finally been starting to achieve exit velocity, leaving behind the trappings of a disastrous start and finally becoming the robust loan forgiveness program it was designed to be.
From the six-figure average forgiveness to the double-digit approval rate, this program is for real.
(Note 1: For explanations of the data and corresponding calculations, please see the original article about parsing the PSLF reports.)
(Note 2: Due to a lag in collecting and processing the data, the report released in October 2020 only has data through September 2020.)
Approval Rate
Even when adjusted for borrower errors, the overall program looks to have a low approval rate. However, that is just the first few years of abysmal performance dragging down the average.
The month-over-month approval rates have on an upward trajectory for the past year.
- September 2019 (adjusted): 2.50%
- September 2020 (adjusted): 13.29%
That is 10.79 percentage points in a single year. Said another way, over 400% more borrowers…
