The announcement comes three months after the Biden administration said it would cancel $1 billion in student loan debt for about 73,000 defrauded students who were deemed eligible for the relief under former Education Secretary Betsy Devos but received only partial loan forgiveness after she changed the cancellation calculation.

An executive action that broadly forgives federal student loans would be unprecedented, but a memo from lawyers at Harvard's Legal Services Center and its Project on Predatory Student Lending says the Department of Education has the power to do so.

Biden did not include a student debt cancellation provision in his proposed $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, which calls for making community college free and expanding Pell Grants for low-income college students.

Student loan advocates say Biden's moves to help victims of for-profit college fraud are good first steps but that the administration can move more quickly to address the backlog of Borrower Defense claims.

"It appears the Biden Administration genuinely wants to help people who are owed discharges," said Alex Elson, vice president for policy and co-founder of the non-profit Student Defense and a former attorney at the Department of Education who helped establish the Borrower Defense program.