More than 94% of Ohio student loan borrowers eligible for debt forgiveness

Nolan Simmons, The Columbus Dispatch
·2 min read
52

Nine out of 10 people who have outstanding student loans will get up to $10,000 in debt wiped out and in Ohio that translates into hundreds of thousands of people.

Statewide, 1.8 million people have student loan debt; 1.68 million of them are eligible to have $10,000 forgiven; 1.08 million of that 1.68 million are eligible to have an additional $10,000 forgiven because they were on Pell Grants.

In early September, the Biden administration announced its plan to offer student loan forgiveness to low- and middle-income student loan borrowers. The White House predicts more than 40 million people nationwide will be eligible for debt forgiveness, and that nearly 20 million borrowers will have all of their student loan debt wiped away.

Not everyone who goes to college takes out loans. So 40% of the people in Ohio who attended college will be eligible for the debt relief, according to the White House.

Graduates process through Ohio Stadium at the start of Ohio State Spring Commencement in 2022. Joshua A. Bickel/Columbus Dispatch
Graduates process through Ohio Stadium at the start of Ohio State Spring Commencement in 2022. Joshua A. Bickel/Columbus Dispatch

How much student debt do people in Ohio have?

Ohioans with student loan debt collectively owe about $63 billion.

According to Education Data Initiative, an organization that collects data on the U.S. education system, it breaks down this way:

  • On average, borrowers owe $34,721.

  • About 22% owe between $20,000 and $40,000.

  • About 16% owe less than $5,000.

  • About 1.6% owe more than $200,000.

Ohioans are more likely to have outstanding student loan debt than people almost anywhere else in the U.S. About 15% of Ohio residents have student loan debt, second only to the District of Columbia, where more than 16% of residents owe student loans.

Apart from debt forgiveness, the administration's plan extended the student loan repayment pause one final time through December and proposed a new income-based repayment plan meant to reduce the cost of monthly payments. Borrowers are eligible for relief under the plan only if they have federal loans and make less than $125,000 annually, or $250,000 for households, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

An application to receive student loan debt forgiveness will be made available before the end of the year, according to the White House. You can be notified when it's released by signing up for the Department of Education newsletter online.

Nolan Simmons is a fellow in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism's Statehouse News Bureau.

Get more political analysis by listening to the Ohio Politics Explained podcast

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Federal student loan forgiveness to impact 1.68 million Ohio borrowers