Student loan borrowers in Texas carry the second largest amount of debt in the U.S., behind California, according to a new report from Lending Tree.
The digital financial network company analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Education and found that 1,389,100 Texans have already been approved for an estimated $18.1 billion in student debt relief. That equals roughly $13,000 in forgiveness per borrower.
According to the White House, nearly 90% of relief dollars will go to those earning less than $75,000 annually.
Lending Tree also reported that another 2,157,500 borrowers are potentially eligible for $28.2 billion of forgiveness.
An estimated 3,759,300 people in Texas have student loan debt, according to Lending Tree.
The report states that the average amount of student loan debt per borrower in Texas is $41,299. The total for the state comes out to $124.1 billion.
Earlier this year, POLITICO filed an open records request with the U.S. Department of Education to determine how many applications were sent to the Biden administration for loan forgiveness in each US ZIP code.
KSAT parsed out 64 San Antonio-area ZIP codes and found that nearly 164,000 people applied for student loan forgiveness in those ZIP codes based on POLITICO’s data set.
The future of student loan forgiveness remains unclear. President Joe Biden’s forgiveness plan is currently in the hands of the Supreme Court.
There’s no exact date that the Supreme Court is expected to make a decision, but the consensus is that borrowers will have an answer regarding debt relief sometimes this summer.
Payments for student loans are set to resume on June 30 if the litigation has not been resolved by that date. Borrowers will have up to 60 days from that date to resume payments if no ruling is issued.
If the Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan before June 30, borrowers will have to start paying their remaining balances 60 days after the court’s decision.
LendingTree researchers used various data from the Department of Education, including loan forgiveness applications and approvals, outstanding direct loan portfolios by state, outstanding direct loan portfolios by debt size, and institution-level loan disbursement data from College Scorecard microdata, according to the methodology.
Editor’s note: The video attached to this article is from a previous report.