As president, Donald Trump called for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education’s existing loan relief programs, including the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness initiative, which benefits public employees such as members of the U.S. armed forces, first responders, public defenders, prosecutors and teachers. Trump also wanted to slash the department’s budget, and his administration halted a regulation aimed at providing loan forgiveness to those defrauded by their schools.

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Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s new affordable repayment plan that leads to expedited forgiveness for many borrowers, known as SAVE, is currently on hold amid a slew of legal challenges.

The bottom line: relying on loan forgiveness may backfire, financial experts warn.

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The general rule of thumb is not to borrow more than you expect to earn as a starting salary, said Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit.

That figure will vary based on what a student selects as a major. You can look up annual average incomes for different occupations at the U.S. Department of Labor’s website.

There are several factors that have contributed to the increase in the number of borrowers carrying six figures in student loan debt,” said Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit that helps borrowers navigate the repayment of their debt.

The biggest one, though, is the fact that higher education has become significantly more expensive over the decades, Mayotte said.

The annual sticker price for certain schools, after factoring in tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses, is now nearing $100,000.

Two of the most popular debt cancellation avenues are the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which leads to a debt jubilee after a decade of payments for qualifying workers, and the income-driven repayment plans.

Those plans, which cap a borrowers’ monthly bill at a share of their discretionary income, lead to debt erasure after 10 to 25 years of payments. There are currently four different plans, each with different rules.

But there are also “over 100 other forgiveness programs out there to explore,” said Mayotte in an earlier interview with CNBC.

“Many are offered by states looking to encourage certain types of employment, such as health care and public defenders,” she said.

Mayotte’s website, FreeStudentLoanAdvice.org, has a database of these programs, she said.

A big deadline is coming up for people with federal student loans to be eligible for forgiveness.

Borrowers with certain kinds of federal loans need to consolidate — effectively, refinance with the federal government — by Tuesday, April 30, to qualify for debt cancellation through two existing programs, Income-Driven Repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

The Department of Education is currently doing what it calls a one-time account adjustment, reviewing every single one of the more than 40 million federal student loan accounts and giving borrowers credit for years of past payments that previously did not count toward forgiveness.

“Essentially what it’s saying is, ‘Listen, we don’t think that the industry as a whole did a good job communicating to borrowers about the existence of the Income-Driven plans,’” said Betsy Mayotte, who runs the nonprofit Institute of Student Loan Advisors.