The US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, June 5, 2025. <\/p>\n
Eric Lee | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Student loan borrowers may face more delays<\/p>\n Early Wednesday, the U.S.\u00a0government<\/a>\u00a0shut down<\/a> after lawmakers failed to reach a funding deal, meaning that federal workers across agencies will be\u00a0temporarily put on unpaid leave<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a Sept. 28 memorandum<\/a>, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon estimated it would take half a day to complete shutdown activities at the agency and that 1,485 employees out of the 1,700 remaining would be furloughed<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Trump administration’s\u00a0termination<\/a>\u00a0in March of\u00a0nearly half of the staff at the Education Department already included many of the people who assisted borrowers in the Federal Student Aid office. Those cuts have led, in part, to a pileup of applications from borrowers trying to access repayment plans and a debt forgiveness program required by Congress.<\/p>\n More from Personal Finance: More than a million borrowers are in a backlog to enroll in an income-driven repayment plan, according to court records from mid-September. Meanwhile, 74,510 people are waiting for a determination from the Education Department on their Public Service Loan Forgiveness status. (IDR plans cap borrowers’ bills at a share of their income each month, and PSLF leads to debt erasure for public servants after a decade.)<\/p>\n Some of the borrowers\u00a0CNBC has spoken with<\/a>\u00a0in recent months have already been waiting six months or more for a PSLF determination.<\/p>\n During the shutdown, Federal Student Aid staff “will not be able to perform regular operations, including working on the IDR backlog,” a spokesperson for the Education Department told CNBC.<\/p>\n Even fewer forms will be processed than before.<\/p>\n Mark Kantrowitz<\/p>\n higher education expert<\/p>\n The shutdown risks exacerbating the current crisis for borrowers, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. The\u00a0AFT<\/a>\u00a0filed\u00a0a class-action complaint<\/a>\u00a0in September against the Trump administration, and has said the Education Department is denying\u00a0student loan borrowers<\/a> the rights to which they’re legally entitled.<\/p>\n “The over 1 million borrowers whose applications are sitting on someone’s desk will see even greater delays, with thousands more falling through the cracks for each day,” Weingarten said.<\/p>\n During the lapse in government funding, Kantrowitz said, “there will be nobody at the U.S. Department of Education to provide final approval for the forgiveness of a borrower’s loans.” <\/p>\n Still, in McMahon’s memo, she writes, “borrowers are expected to continue repayment throughout a shutdown.”<\/p>\n More than 40 million Americans hold government-issued student loans, and they owe more than $1.6 trillion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, June 5, 2025. Eric Lee | Bloomberg | Getty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1071,122,12,10499,3,147,1909,111,113150,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-195227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-breaking-news-politics","tag-business-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-linda-mcmahon","tag-news","tag-personal-finance","tag-personal-loans","tag-politics","tag-randi-weingarten","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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