Desirée Ward has taught at Central Texas community colleges for five years, sometimes shuttling between two campuses to teach as many as seven writing and humanities courses in a semester.

The pay isn’t great, and there is no health insurance or retirement plan. But she loves teaching, particularly to first-generation college students like herself, and she’s had another reason to stick with it: the promise that a federal program meant to help public servants will eventually wipe away her student loans.

That, Ward figures, would free up cash and help her save for the future. But the two years she’s spent gathering the paperwork that would prove her eligibility have her increasingly concerned that might never happen, and she’ s now contemplating switching careers.

“My situation looks like I will never retire,” said Ward, 42, who is considering transforming some of her side gigs, like working as a writing coach, into full-time work or taking an administrative job at a for-profit company.

Desirée Ward has been trying to access the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for two years. Desiree Ward

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, was intended to protect Americans like Ward from having to choose between a sound financial future and a career in public service by forgiving the loans of borrowers who’ve dedicated at least 10 years to public service in fields ranging from medicine to social work.

As many as 4 million borrowers qualify for the program, according to a 2015 Government Accountability Office report, representing the potential retirement of billions in debt. The first cohort of borrowers is eligible for forgiveness next year) but many are unsure if they’ll be able to collect.

Only a fraction of those who might be eligible even know about the program, advocates say, and many who do are confused by its requirements. Some say they’ve first been told they’re eligible — and then that they’re not — without clear explanation. Others report difficulty getting an explanation or appealing their cases. The government, meanwhile, is still refining the process for actually clearing the debts.

The future of the program itself is uncertain. Some lawmakers already say it needs an overhaul. Critics say it amounts to a giveaway to savvy graduate students and graduate schools and argue that eligibility should be narrowed and debt relief capped. (The Obama administration proposed caps in the last budget it sent to Congress.)

Some workers, meanwhile, hope it will expand to cover their fields. And president-elect Donald Trump has been coy about his administration’s plans for college affordability and student debt, so it is hard to know whether the program will survive in its current form.

Consequently, many — including politicians, advocates and borrowers — are watching the controversial program closely as the first group of borrowers eligible for forgiveness prepares to raise its hands late next year.

“We’re going to have a lot of very upset people,” said Natalia Abrams, executive director of debt advocacy organization Student Debt Crisis. Telling borrowers who thought they’d qualify for forgiveness that they won’t is “the worst part of my job,” she said.

The Department of Education declined to comment for this article. The agency has worked to raise awareness of the program in recent months, launching an email campaign that targets borrowers and hosting webinars and social media events. (More information on PSLF is available online: get general information or see the employer certification form.)

Millions eligible, but a fraction on target to claim the benefit

In a 2015 report, the GAO estimated that 4 million Americans qualify for PSLF, meaning they have the right type of loans and work in the right fields. But it appears that just over 10% of that number are on track to have their loans forgiven at some point, according to June 2016 figures from the Department of Education.

The only way for a borrower to know for sure that she’s on track to have her loans forgiven after 10 years of payments is to fill out a form provided by the Department and have it approved by the agency.

Once the form, known as the employment certification form, is approved, her loans are transferred to the one servicer, known as FedLoan Servicing, in charge of working with PSLF borrowers. She also receives information about how many more payments she’s required to make before having her loans forgiven. So far, just 432,000 borrowers have had these forms approved.

Only a tiny fraction of the borrowers who had their employment certification forms approved by the Department had made enough payments to have their loans forgiven next year. As of May, according to the Department of Education, just 0.01% of the nearly 400,000 who had their forms approved made at least 8 years of payments.

The chart above shows how many years of qualifying payments borrowers have made. Just 0.1% have made enough payments to qualify for forgiveness next year. Terrance Horan

There is also likely a cohort of borrowers who haven’t filled out the employment certification form but expect to claim forgiveness under the program at some point. Borrower advocates worry that it is only at that point that borrowers will realize they aren’t eligible.

In other cases, they may find out they’ve made fewer qualifying payments than they realized; that means they’ll have to continue paying their loans for longer than expected and wait longer for forgiveness.

Even if these borrowers do qualify, they’ll likely have to gather documentation for 10 years of employment to prove they’re eligible for forgiveness — a daunting task if they’ve switched employers often or if a former employer shut down.

In other words, experts say, few will get their loans forgiven in 2017. “Hardly anybody is going to qualify,” said student debt expert Heather Jarvis; Abrams likened those who would to “the unicorn,” saying she’d never met one.

The reasons why are varied:

• Some borrowers have the wrong federal loans: Only borrowers with Direct federal loans qualify for PSLF, but the bulk of government-backed loans issued before 2010 were part of the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL). Borrowers can consolidate FFEL loans into Direct loans, but that takes an extra step. (The GAO’s estimate of Americans eligible for PSLF doesn't include those with FFEL loans working in public service.)

• Some are in the wrong repayment program: Only borrowers using an income-driven repayment plan, which cap payments at a certain percentage of income, qualify for and will receive a benefit from PSLF. Borrowers in the 10-year standard repayment program — the default plan borrowers are placed in when they enter repayment — qualify, but won’t receive any forgiveness because they will have paid their entire loan off in 10 years.

• Others are discovering they work in the wrong type of public service: Government work and full-time jobs at 501(c) 3 nonprofits generally clearly for PSLF, but the rules for other types of nonprofit employers are more unclear.

• Most qualifying payment programs for public service loan forgiveness weren’t available until 2009, when the Obama administration began adding a variety of income-driven repayment plans. Before 2009, borrowers only had one option for making payments tied to their income. That means it is unlikely that many borrowers will have been making payments in an income-sensitive plan for 10 years by 2017.

And there is plenty of general confusion about the program. The single largest reason the government has rejected borrowers’ employer certification forms is because of paperwork mistakes, not necessarily because they don’t qualify, according to December 2016 Education Department data. (Borrowers who are denied can reapply and fight their case.)

Christina Dragonetti, membership manager for the California Association of Nonprofits, switched repayment programs and resubmitted lost paperwork to quality for the program. She recently learned she would be paying her loans for two years longer than she originally anticipated, only discovering the discrepancy because she submitted employer certification forms every year and so was regularly updated on her progress toward forgiveness.

Since Dragonetti pays about $500 each month on her loans, those two years make “a big difference.” In response, she says, she’s re-evaluated planned retirement contributions and changed other parts of her financial plan.

“This is really depressing,” she said. “I had started to think about being able to put money away for my nephew’s college, and I’m not going to be able to do that for another two years,” said Dragonetti. “I really wanted to be able to travel, and I’m not going to be able to do that for another two years. I was going to buy a car in the next couple of years, and I’m definitely not going to do that.”

Dragonetti still expects to get her loans forgiven at some point, but others are less confident. Meghan Johnson says the existence of the program influenced her decision to go to law school in the first place. Johnson knew she wanted to work as a public interest lawyer and wasn’t willing to take on the debt without some light at the end of the tunnel. She’s now learning that her four years defending children in immigration court on a pro-bono basis may not count toward forgiveness.

Johnson was confident she’d be eligible for the program. She didn’t fill out an employer certification form, and for much of her time working at the American Bar Association, the Department was approving her colleagues’ forms. But in recent months, Johnson’s fellow attorneys have had their forms rejected. (One of them quit shortly after she got the news.) The government also told Johnson’s colleagues that previously certified payments no longer counted toward forgiveness.

The American Bar Association is a 501(c) 6, primarily a membership organization for lawyers, and so it doesn’t fit within the traditional definition of public interest law groups covered by the program. Still, ABA officials and lawyers like Johnson who are doing public interest work and are employed by the group say they’re confused and concerned by what they see as a sudden reversal in policy.

The American Bar Association has been pressuring the Department of Education to restore its employees’ access to the program, but Johnson is preparing for the worst-case scenario. She is using an income-driven program to cap her payments at a percentage of her income, which stretches out the payment term to at least 20 years.

Johnson’s payments are so small that she says she feels like she’s barely making a dent her loans. She estimates that if she were paying off her loans under the standard repayment plan, which stretches the loans out over 10 years, her monthly bill would be about $2,000 — more than she can afford on a public interest lawyer’s salary. And so with the promise of forgiveness after 10 years of payments in limbo, Johnson said she feels like she’ll never be debt-free.

“Have the last four years that I’ve been working here not been helping me work toward my loan forgiveness? If so,” Johnson said, “that is a huge setback for me.”

‘A hidden gem’

While Johnson and her colleagues are relatively savvy about the program’s requirements, most borrowers aren’t aware of the program or only have a vague sense of its details, advocates say. The lack of information from employers, the government and student loan servicers has prompted unions and other organizations to fill in the void, holding workshops to provide some clarity.

“It is almost as if it is a hidden gem,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents about 1.6 million school-related professionals, a large share of whom likely qualify for PSLF. “The problem is, it is a program that is unknown and it is incredibly difficult to access.”

At a recent student debt workshop for members of a union representing New York City’s municipal employees, many attendees had never heard of the program. One man with $60,000 in student loans said his employer never told him about the program and gave him a hard time about leaving work to attend the meeting, even though it was held in the evening.

Jahmila Joseph, the union’s assistant associate director, regularly runs the workshops, where people often learn about PSLF for the first time. She said she’s seen workers burst into tears when they learn they haven’t take the right steps to enroll in the program — such as consolidating their FFEL loans into Direct loans —when they thought they would soon be eligible for forgiveness.

“People are desperate for help,” said Joseph.

Even experts can face challenges. Rachel Fishman, a senior policy analyst in the education policy program at think tank New America, said she’s fighting a rejection from the Department to certify some of her loan payments as counting toward forgiveness. One of her nonprofit employers is no longer operating, which has complicated the process

“Now a lot of the burden is on me,” said Fishman.

Daunting paperwork

Servicers, the private companies that manage the federal student loan repayment process, aren’t helping, some experts say. The student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau noted in a recent report that the agency has received complaints from borrowers about their servicers losing paperwork or delaying their transfer to repayment programs that would qualify them for PSLF.

“Some of these complaints suggest that servicing problems are preventing borrowers from making qualified payments in pursuit of Public Service Loan Forgiveness,” the report said — meaning borrowers could be working in qualifying employment and making payments on their loans but aren’t being credited toward forgiveness.

Lynn Clark has worked in public education on and off for more than 20 years — consecutively for nearly 10 years, most recently — and grappled with her student loans for about 11. She watched the debt she took on in 2005 to help her daughter pay for school balloon from $35,000 to $100,000, as the interest — which was at a relatively high rate — kept compounding and she struggled to afford payments on it.

During that time, Clark never learned from her servicer about programs that could make the debt more manageable, like income-driven repayment or public service loan forgiveness. Instead, she first heard about PSLF after attending a workshop hosted by her union last year, leaving with hope that the program might help with her debt.

Lynn Clark, pictured with her granddaughter, has struggled to access the PSFL program. Lynn Clark

Clark, 65, filled out the forms, sent them in and was rejected twice. Both times she was also told she had to consolidate her loans to qualify for the program. Like most borrowers who took on federal student loan debt before 2010, Clark’s loans were made under the FFEL program, and nobody told her she could consolidate those loans to become eligible.

Clark became so desperate to enroll that she wound up contacting a scam operator she said asked for $600 to help her sign up. Instead, she returned to her servicer for more information, finally getting the paperwork to consolidate her debt earlier this month.

An uncertain future

As borrowers struggle to enroll in the program, some have questioned whether it should continue to exist in its current form. Critics argue it mostly helps savvy graduate students with high debt burdens and high earning potential.

There is a limit to the amount of federal debt an undergraduate borrower can take on — $31,000 for dependent undergraduates — that may reasonably be paid off in 10 years, even on a public servant’s salary, said Jason Delisle, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Graduate students, on the other hand can borrow up to the cost of their program.

By allowing both the borrowing and forgiveness to be unlimited under PSLF, the federal student loan program is essentially subsidizing graduate schools and their students, Delisle said.

Some argue that this is particularly clear in the medical community. About a quarter of medical school graduates in 2014 said they planned to use the program, according to a study published earlier this year in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The study found that recent medical school graduates who used the program would have an average of $131,000 forgiven.

Many of the borrowers who have certified their loans in the program have relatively high debt loads. The data above shows borrowers certified for the program by debt load as of December 2015. Terrance Horan

Partly in response to these concerns, the Obama administration has suggested capping forgiveness at $57,500 — the limit for undergraduate borrowers taking out student loans — in the last budget it sent to Congress. Delisle said he’d like to see the government go even further by eliminating the program and allowing borrowers who are struggling to manage their payments on a public servant’s salary to rely on income-based repayment. The savings could be put into the Pell grant program, which provides grants for low-income students to attend college, he said.

“The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program comes in and actually absolves the lawmakers and the policy makers and the employers who all want everyone to have master’s degrees, which in many cases may not be worth it,” he said.

Others have suggested modifications that might make the program more generous. Farmers have lobbied to be included in the fields eligible for forgiveness, getting support from some members of congress. Other lawmakers have suggested allowing borrowers to receive incremental forgiveness after shorter periods of public service.

“It is too darn long for people to wait today,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who introduced a bill that would allow borrowers to receive forgiveness as they go under the program.

“My biggest fear has been that people who were good intentioned and went into public service — especially after 2007 — and factored in that the public service loan forgiveness program would help them at the end of 10 years are finding that the student debt is just so insurmountable that they have to go into a private sector job and then end up being disqualified,” Swallwell said.

For those who do successfully certify into PSLF, questions remain. Though hundreds of thousands of borrowers have had their loans and jobs certified as eligible for forgiveness by filling out employer certification forms, it is likely they’ll have to go through another application process to receive forgiveness and it is unclear how that will work.

“There is no process,” said Fishman. “The process has not been revealed for what it actually takes to hit the button on PSLF.”

Meanwhile, president-elect Trump has offered hints as to how he would address student debt and college affordability once in office but hasn’t discussed specifics such as PSLF. In an October speech on the campaign trail in Ohio, he made what might have been a reference to PSLF, noting that “young Americans deserve the same deal as federal workers” while touting a plan that would allow all borrowers to cap their student loan payments at 12.5% of their incomes and have the loans forgiven after 15 years.

Any major changes to the PSLF program would require a lengthy rule-making process, so the program is likely safe until at least late next year.

Meanwhile, borrowers are holding out hope and evaluating options. Anya Dubin, a 34-year-old social worker, went through the process of certifying her loans about six months ago. Seeing her previous payments certified and learning how many more she had to go made Dubin feel more comfortable relying on the program; she’s considered refinancing her debt with a private lender at a lower interest rate out of fear that when her turn for forgiveness arrives the program won’t exist in its current form.

“I’m really hopeful that it is going to pan out, but I don’t necessarily have faith that our government is going to have any money for me in six years when it is time to apply,” she said.

This story was first published on Nov. 23, 2016.