Loan Forgiveness Programs

Most of the students in the United States have some student loan debt on their shoulders when they graduate from college. Hence, the students have to obtain a job as soon as possible to start paying back their loan. A good idea at this point is to explore possibilities of loan forgiveness programs. Some of the federal loans have some student loan forgiveness clauses attached with them that can be utilized to lower the amount of monthly loan repayments and ease the financial burden on the newly graduated student.

Although many of the school loan forgiveness programs have been arranged by the federal government, however, teachers are considered valuable by many states, and the state governments such as Washington, North Carolina, and Iowa, to name a few, have special loan forgiveness programs in place for people doing teaching especially in low income areas or in subject-shortage areas.

Some of the federal student loan forgiveness programs are mentioned below:

Stafford Loan Forgiveness Programs for Teachers:
This forgiveness program is applicable for people who have been teaching for five consecutive years in special elementary and secondary schools located in low-income areas. Such teachers can receive a cancellation of up to $17,500 of their loan amount.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness Programs:
This loan forgiveness program was started in 2007 to encourage people to work in public-service jobs. To be eligible, the student must have paid 120 timely, full payments according to a repayment schedule that qualifies for this forgiveness program such as the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) Plan. The public-service job is defined as any job with a local, state, or federal government organization or a tax-exempted non-profit organization.

Loan Forgiveness Programs for Voluntary Work or Military:
Organizations like Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) not only give stipends but also have loan forgiveness and deferment schemes. Similarly, joining the Army National Guard also has monetary benefits in the form of loan forgiveness.

Therefore, the best thing to be done by students after they graduate is to keep their eyes open and do their research to discover such college loan forgiveness programs that can substantially reduce their debt.

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