Biden forgives another $5 billion in student loans for 74K borrowers

• The batch of debt cancelation announced Friday stemmed, in part, from his administration's changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.
• The majority of borrowers who will benefit from the latest round of forgiveness are teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public service professionals, per a White House release.
• The remaining borrowers who will benefit have repaid their loans for at least 20 years but never got the relief they were entitled to under their income-driven repayment plans.

What they're saying: Biden said in a statement his administration would continue to find other ways to forgive loans held by "as many borrowers as possible."

• "I won't back down from using every tool at our disposal to get student loan borrowers the relief they need to reach their dreams," he said.

The big picture: The price of higher education in the country has soared over the last few decades, according to the Education Data Initiative.

• The Biden administration's blanket student debt forgiveness plan had been critiqued as doing little to address high college costs, the root cause of the trillion-dollar student debt problem.

Go deeper: Millions of debtors have not yet made their first student loan repayment