The Trump administration has announced it will cancel $150 million in debt for certain students.

Some 15,000 former students whose schools closed while they were in attendance will now have their debt erased, the Education Department said Thursday. The department estimates that the forgiven loans will add up to around $150 million.

"For them, it's going to be a very nice Christmas present," said Clare McCann, deputy director of higher education policy at think tank New America and a former Education Department official.

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The "closed school discharge" allows people who attended schools that shuttered and then didn't enroll in another college to have their federal student loans automatically canceled after three years. The provision is part of the "borrower defense" regulation put into force under the Obama administration.

Since November 2013, nearly 3,600 schools have closed a campus or ceased operating altogether, according to the National Student Legal Defense Network.