Actually, the program is much less expensive for taxpayers than it could be, covering a fraction of the borrowers who are potentially eligible for relief, as Krista Eliot's experience suggests. The Government Accountability Office has said that as many as four million people may be eligible for the program. Around 308,000 people were approved to be in the program as of October – 8 percent of the total who are potentially eligible, according to the GAO. The GAO reported in August that the Education Department had failed to set clear expectations for how its loan servicers should proactively tell borrowers about the program.
Even people who managed to get into the program are probably not going to get relief, the data show. About one in four people who believe they are working toward debt relief are not actually in repayment plans that allow them to cancel their debt, or will repay their loans before the government has the chance to forgive them.
The Education Department estimates that only 600,000 people would actually qualify to get their loans erased for working in the public sector.