State of Impending Emergency: How Recovery from the Pandemic Could Complicate Student Loan Repayment – NASFAA
The pandemic has put many seasonal rituals on hold — a surprisingly welcomed one being monthly student loan bills. While there were concerns over the logistics in administering the pause, getting the entire system back into repayment, with a somewhat fluid resumption date, is far more daunting.
“A lot of people are underestimating how difficult this is going to be,” said Preston Cooper, a visiting fellow for higher education policy at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. “We are really in uncharted territory here because we’ve never tried a student loan payment suspension of this magnitude before.”
There are many outstanding questions when it comes to resuming federal student loan repayment, stemming from the Department of Education (ED) navigating the reentry process and borrowers assessing their fiscal well-being and repayment options, to the potential for some form of debt forgiveness. All the while, many borrowers are attempting to grasp how the economy has transformed their professions and what sort of skills they’ll need for a post-pandemic workforce.
For instance, borrowers may be looking to switch their repayment plans to an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan due to a loss in their income.