Twitter users reported that Nelnet, a major student loan repayment service, crashed on Wednesday after President Biden announced up to $20,000 worth of student loan relief.
Biden announced a plan on Wednesday that could see individuals making less than $125,000 annually have $10,000 of their federal student debt wiped away, and up to $20,000 if they received a Pell grant.
Details surrounding applications for the debt relief and qualifications are still somewhat murky and expected to be cleared up by the end of the week, but that didn’t stop people from trying to check their student loan balance on Nelnet. The surge in traffic seems to have crashed the website.
Twitter users were quick to tweet about the error and crack jokes over the absurdity of the situation.
“Millennial culture is crashing Nelnet because you can’t remember how much student loan debt above $10,000 you still have,” one user wrote.
“I knew the second I tried to login to Nelnet that all my fellow, poverty stricken graduates had already beat me to it lol,” wrote another.
“lmfaoooo nelnet is DOWN 😭 we all really said let me look at these stupid ass loans for the first time in 3 years at the same time,” another said.
In a statement, Nelnet said it is “experiencing extremely high website and phone traffic” and directed users to the Department of Education website to determine debt relief eligibility.
The Debt Collective, a group that advocates for student debt relief, also said the Department of Education website was also down.
The group said they warned the White House about the possibility of a crash due to the lack of resources at the DOE, but the warnings fell on deaf ears.
“We tried to warn you,” the group said and referenced Biden’s extension of the payment pause until Dec. 31. “Make cancellation automatic. Good luck trying to turn payments on Jan 1. It’s not going to happen.”
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*First Published: Aug 24, 2022, 3:18 pm CDT
Jacob Seitz
Jacob Seitz is a freelance journalist originally from Columbus, Ohio, interested in the intersection of culture and politics.
