The hiring of a new assistant general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education who co-authored a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) supporting wide-scale student loan cancellation shouldn’t be interpreted as the Biden administration will now “automatically” enact wide-scale student loan forgiveness.

The Biden administration has hired a vocal proponent of canceling student debt for a key post in the Education Department. The Education Department hired Toby Merrill to serve as deputy general counsel in the Office of the General Counsel, the agency said in a statement.

Yahoo Finance’s Aarthi Swaminathan joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel top discuss Senators urging the Education Department to fix forgiveness programs as payment cliff nears.

A Harvard law professor who said the education secretary has legal authority to forgive $50,000 in student debt per person as Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed was appointed to serve in the Department of Education's legal division.

A new hire at the Education Department is another in the growing number of experts who have fought alongside Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to reform the student-loan debt system.

The Biden administration may have just given proponents of broad student loan forgiveness a reason to hold out hope that the President will take action on student debt.

A vocal proponent of canceling student loan debt is joining the Biden administration in a top role at the Education Department’s Office of the General Counsel.

When Catherine Bolton retired earlier this year, she entered her golden years with an obligation she’d hoped she would be done with by now: roughly $40,000 in student debt.