Ensuring Debt Relief for Older Borrowers

The Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) student loan discharge program has undergone dramatic improvements over the past year. The TPD program allows people with substantially work-limiting disabilities to discharge their student loan debt. Recent changes the Biden Administration has made to this program have made it more effective and easier to use and have resulted in a total of $8.5 billion in loan discharges for over 400,000 people with disabilities. Additional discharges are expected as the Department of Education (ED) finalizes the rules negotiated in late 2021 that would make significant additional changes. But even with all of these necessary reforms, one population of disabled borrowers—older adults—still cannot access the TPD program easily, despite carrying a growing amount of student loan debt. This situation is likely leading many seniors to face financial precarity in retirement, particularly borrowers in default who are subject to the federal government’s harsh debt collection measures. Accordingly, this paper suggests various administrative and legislative changes that could help older borrowers access the student loan relief they are entitled to under the law through the TPD program and other remedies that would protect low-income older borrowers