Ten years ago this month, Congress enacted the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF), promising student debt forgiveness to workers who dedicated part of their careers to the public sector. The program aimed to incentivize students to choose—or at least compensate students for choosing—less lucrative careers in the public sector.

More than half a million people, many of them with more than $100,000 in debt, have already submitted employer certification forms for PSLF, which allows former students who work in the public sector and make regular payments on their federal student loans to have debt forgiven after 10 years.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program defines the public sector broadly, offering loan forgiveness to workers in federal, state, and local governments, as well as at private nonprofits. This encompasses roughly a quarter of the 25- to 34-year-old workforce with some postsecondary education.

If the focus of PSLF is truly public service, a possible avenue for reform might be more precisely defining what public service means. Arguably, the original definition’s appeal was in its transparency. The alternative, identifying particular occupations, may be more complicated.

Read the full article by Erica Blom about loan forgiveness from Urban Institute