Education Department to roll out another pathway to student loan debt relief in February

The Biden Administration is rolling out another pathway to debt relief for certain student loan borrowers next month.

The program targets people who took out smaller loan balances initially and have been paying their loans down for over a decade, unable to get out from under the debt. It's a component of the SAVE Plan, a new income-driven repayment plan rolled out by the Biden administration last year.

Specifically, people will qualify if they took out less than $12,000 as their initial student loan balance and have been paying it down for 10 years. They also have to be enrolled in SAVE.

The shortened pathway to debt relief is largely intended to benefit people who went to community college or didn't end up graduating from college but still incurred debt, officials said, which has historically been the group at highest risk for defaulting on their loans.

«If you're paying it for 10 years, it's enough,» Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in an interview on «Start Here,» ABC News' daily podcast. «They've done their part and it's time to release that debt so they can move on and continue to grow in their finances,» he said of borrowers.

«This is one strategy among many that is intended to open the doors to higher education, make it more affordable so that more folks can access it,» Cardona said to «Start Here» host Brad Mielke.

More than three in five borrowers with defaulted loans originally borrowed less than $12,000, Department of Education Under Secretary James Kvaal said.

Administration officials wouldn't provide specifics on how many people will qualify for this new pathway to debt relief – but about 6.9 million people have enrolled in SAVE since it opened up last year, or about one-third of borrowers currently in