Trump Admin Removes Applications for Income-Driven Student Loan Repayment Plans
Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images- Federal student loan borrowers cannot currently apply for any IDR plan.
- The Department of Education removed online applications Feb. 21.
- IDR plans offer lower monthly payments for most borrowers.
- It remains unclear what will happen to borrowers already enrolled in existing IDR plans.
Federal student loan borrowers are currently unable to apply for any income-driven repayment (IDR) plan.
Federal Student Aid (FSA) removed the online application for all IDR plans from its website on Feb. 21. FSA cites a recent decision from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocking the implementation of former President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan as the reason for the removal.
“A federal court issued an injunction preventing the U.S. Department of Education from implementing the [SAVE] Plan and other [IDR] plans,” reads a banner on the FSA website. “As a result, the IDR and loan consolidation applications are currently unavailable.”
The appellate court’s decision to uphold an earlier preliminary injunction does not, however, apply to all IDR plans.
“In sum, we affirm the district court’s entry of a preliminary injunction and remand for further proceedings and with instructions to modify the preliminary injunction to enjoin the entire SAVE Rule as well as the hybrid rule,” Judge L. Steven Grasz wrote in the court’s decision.
The injunction seemingly should only apply to the SAVE plan and the original Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) plan that SAVE replaced. It’s unclear why President Donald Trump’s Department of Education (ED) decided to apply this ruling to all IDR plans.
ED did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The department, then under Biden, placed SAVE borrowers into forbearance in mid-2024 after the court initially issued an injunction blocking parts of the SAVE plan. The court’s more recent opinion, issued Feb. 18, expanded the scope of that injunction to cover the entire plan.
The court said Biden’s SAVE plan went beyond the scope of what Congress allowed in creating the income-based repayment plans, particularly by offering complete debt forgiveness in as few as 10 years.
The Trump administration’s removal of all IDR plans will likely impact low-income borrowers and public servants the most.
That’s because low-income borrowers are most likely to benefit from lower monthly payments through an IDR plan. Public servants who may hope to get loan forgiveness through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, meanwhile, benefit from the reduced monthly payments of an IDR plan as they work toward forgiveness after 10 years.
It remains unclear what will happen with federal student loan borrowers already enrolled in an IDR plan, especially those who may soon need to recertify their income.