The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program allows certain not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after a decade in repayment. But the program has been plagued by problems.

Ramon Montiel-García, a newly minted high school graduate from Denver, was accepted to his first-choice school, Wheaton College in Massachusetts. However, with a sticker price of nearly $80,000 per year, he needed financial aid to bring the cost down.