While the CARES Act offered relief from student debt payments, the terms of the relief has nonetheless left millions of student borrowers twisting in the wind, as they find they do not qualify for the program, according to the Wall Street Journal. The legislation contained a provision giving student borrowers six months' relief on payments, interest free. However, this provision applies only to loans directly held by the U.S. government, and while these loans represent the majority of federal student borrowers, the Journal notes that they leaves out about 7 million people whose debt is held by private institutions, despite going through the government program. What's more, this has nothing to do with the students' individual choices, as they often had no say over who specifically would hold their debt. While the initial plan was to give every student borrower $10,000 off their debts, Republicans said that this was too generous, and so the current payment pause was the result. This means that millions who thought they were eligible to relief are now out of luck as they contend with a student debt load that was massive even before the crisis and, by the beginning of the year, had reached $1.6 trillion.