The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has announced it’s considering expanding Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) to early childhood education (ECE) workers employed at for-profit businesses.
“Early childhood educators help young children learn, grow, and thrive. But they are often poorly compensated, and student debt is a problem,” said U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal. “If these educators can access PSLF, we can help our youngest children, their families, and their communities.”
ED noted that the majority of ECE workers and graduates are women of color or immigrants. While PSLF already offers relief to ECE employees of nonprofit institutions, that’s not where the majority of ECE workers are employed, said Mark Kantrowitz, author of How to Appeal for More College Financial Aid and director of the Research Science Institute, a summer research program for high schoolers at MIT.
“Public service jobs include public education, social work, and early childhood education — it’s already in the definition. But public service requires the employers to either be a government organization, federal, state, local or other, or a 501c3 organization,” said Kantrowitz. “[ED] wants to expand it to include all ECE, or more, and so the question they have is, how would they specify under what circumstances should this for-profit employer qualify?”
Kantrowitz said ED is seeking information from ECE personnel, researchers, institutions, public interest groups, and others to learn the best ways to apply PSLF to for-profit ECE employees while protecting their earnings. ED has offered 30 days to collect this feedback.
“The obvious risk is that someone will set up a for-profit enterprise and not pay employees very well, and say, ‘You’ll get your loan forgiven, so we don’t need to pay you as much,’” said Kantrowitz. “Any good thing can have potential for abuse.”
