AFT had a great town hall recently with tens of thousands of members from across the country. They had so many questions about potential changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Here’s what you and our members need to know:
First, Public Service Loan Forgiveness is as safe as any other right enabled by federal statute. So while we believe repealing PSLF (which is a right included in borrowers’ promissory notes) would require an act of Congress based on our previous experience, we expect we’ll have to hold Donald Trump’s Department of Education accountable for fulfilling its obligations to public employees under federal law.
Second, given prior public statements and the Project 2025 Republican playbook, we expect the incoming Trump administration to repeal the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan.
Third, to prepare for this transition, we encourage all our members with student debt to:
- Enroll in an income-driven repayment plan that qualifies for PSLF. These include Pay As You Earn and Income-Based Repayment plans. Income-Contingent Repayment is available to borrowers with Parent Plus Loans after these loans are consolidated into Direct Consolidation Loans. Borrowers currently enrolled in the SAVE plan should immediately switch their repayment plan to Pay As You Earn or Income-Based Repayment plans to ensure that they can continue making qualifying payments. Borrowers can enroll in or change their current income-driven repayment plan at https://studentaid.gov/idr.
- Certify all previous public service employment by completing the PSLF application using the PSLF Help Tool at https://studentaid.gov/pslf. We recommend completing this application once a year to update your payment count. Borrowers will complete the application one final time after they make their 120th payment.
- Keep good records of payment counts and correspondence with servicers. When we must hold servicers and the Department of Education accountable, this documentation will be critical. If your servicer gave you wrong information about your loans, get on the record and email Repayment_Support@ed.govand file a complaint with the ED’s ombudsman (https://studentaid.gov/feedback-ombudsman/disputes/prepare)
We have all the information you and our members need on our website: www.aft.org/PSLF.
To learn more about income-driven repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, join us at one of our upcoming student debt clinics. All clinics are at 7 p.m. EST, and the next clinics are scheduled for Jan. 15, Jan. 30, Feb. 10 and Feb. 25, with more to be added in the future. Members can sign up at https://go.aft.org/DebtClinicWebinar.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness was a bipartisan promise, but we are preparing for this Trump administration, like the first one, to break that promise. That’s why we need our members to know what they can and should do to protect themselves. Please pass along this information to them and encourage them to sign up for our student debt clinics.