Group Discharges

The criteria to qualify for group discharge are:

• You borrowed federal student loans (Direct or FFEL loans),

• To attend one of the group discharge schools,

• During the time period covered by the group discharge announcement, and

• You still have an outstanding balance on at least one of those loans.

If you meet those criteria, then you are entitled to discharge of any remaining federal student loan balance from that school during that time period. 

If you meet the group discharge criteria, you should have received an email from the Department of Education informing you of your eligibility for loan discharge. Check all email inboxes you have access to, along with any spam/junk folders, for emails from noreply@studentaid.gov. You might have received this email as long ago as June 2022. The Department also sent emails to most group discharge borrowers in January 2025.

PPSL is not able to verify whether specific individuals have been identified by the Department as eligible for group discharge.

It depends. If you made payments on Direct Loans or certain types of FFEL loans that are owned by the Department, then you should receive a refund of those payments. But if you made payments on FFEL loans that are owned by a bank (known as “commercial” FFEL loans), those payments were not made to the Department of Education and thus cannot be refunded. If you made payments on Direct Consolidation loans that included your group discharge loans plus loans from other schools, the Department does not have a policy in place at this time to address those refunds; PPSL is monitoring this issue.

For a more detailed view of your federal student loans, you can download your National Student Loan Data Systems profile, which contains your federal loan and grant history, including information on federal loan type (i.e., Direct, Perkins, or FFEL). This profile does NOT include private loans, which are not affected by the group discharges. Please find instructions on how to download it here.

If you took out loans for the group discharge school before or after the relevant time period, it appears that the Department’s current policy is that it will not cancel those loans and that only your loans from the relevant time period will be discharged. You can still consider applying for borrower defense or closed school discharge (depending on your situation) for any loans that are outside the group discharge window.

If you attended outside the group discharge window, then you will not get an automatic discharge of any of your loans. If you have not already, you should consider applying for borrower defense or closed school discharge, depending on which of those programs fits your situation.

Unfortunately, the Department’s current policy is that group discharge relief does not apply unless you have an outstanding loan balance from the group discharge school. If you already paid off your loans, you may not receive a refund or any alteration of your credit tradelines.

PPSL is aware that borrowers with “mixed” consolidation loans have had a particularly difficult time getting their group discharge relief. At this time, the Department does not appear to have a policy in place to deal with these loans. If you are a group discharge recipient with mixed consolidated loans who has not yet received your discharge, please let us know. 

Consolidating your loans from a group discharge school into a Direct Consolidation loan now will not change your eligibility for group discharge. However, consolidating now is likely to delay your timeline for discharge. Whether consolidation is the right option for you depends on individual factors, such as your payment plan needs and whether you have Parent Plus loans. We are not able to advise on whether consolidation is the right choice for any particular person.

Please be aware: If you consolidate your federal student loans into a private consolidation loan – for example, with a lender such as SoFi, Earnest, or CommonBond – then you will lose your eligibility for group discharge relief. Private consolidation loans do not have the same legal protections as federal student loans held (Direct) or insured (FFEL) by the federal government.

Applying for borrower defense or closed school discharge does not change your entitlement to group discharge. If you are a member of the Sweet class (including the post-class), then your relief will be processed under the terms of the Sweet settlement. 

The criteria to qualify for an automatic extended closed school discharge are:

• You borrowed federal student loans (Direct or FFEL loans),

• To attend one of the extended closed school discharge schools,

• During the specified time period, 

• You did not complete your degree at that school before it closed, and

• You did not re-enroll elsewhere within 3 years following your school’s closure.

If you meet those criteria, then you are entitled to discharge of any remaining federal student loan balance from that school during that time period. 

You will not receive an automatic discharge, but you might be eligible to apply for closed school discharge, if:

• You borrowed federal student loans (Direct or FFEL loans),

• To attend one of the extended closed school discharge schools,

• During the specified time period, 

• You did not complete your degree at that school before it closed, 

• You DID re-enroll elsewhere within 3 years following your school’s closure, BUT

• You still did NOT complete your degree.

If this describes your situation, then we suggest that you consult this resource from the National Consumer Law Center to learn more about applying for closed school discharge.

If you attended one of these schools during the relevant time period and did complete your degree (either at that school or elsewhere later), you might consider applying for borrower defense (unless you are already covered by group discharge, see above).

If you meet the automatic extended closed school discharge criteria, you should have received an email from the Department of Education informing you of your eligibility for loan discharge. Check all email inboxes you have access to, along with any spam/junk folders, for emails from noreply@studentaid.gov. You probably would have received this email in January 2025.

PPSL is not able to verify whether specific individuals have been identified by the Department as eligible for extended closed school discharge.