A person walks on campus at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S. March 26, 2025.
Hannah Beier | Reuters
The U.S. Department of Education announced it is re-opening the online applications for income-driven repayment plans, the programs used by millions of federal student loan borrowers to repay their debt.
The IDR plans now available, according to the Trump administration, are: Income-Based Repayment, Pay As You Earn and Income-Contingent Repayment.
The Trump administration took down the online applications for IDR plans earlier this year, prompting criticism from consumer advocates and borrowers.
At the time, the Education Department cited a February court order as its reason for pulling the applications. That was a decision from an appeals court in February blocking the Biden administration’s new IDR plan, known as SAVE, or Saving on a Valuable Education.
However, the American Federation of Teachers sued the Trump administration this month, arguing that it interpreted the ruling from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals too broadly by pausing the applications for other IDR plans beyond SAVE.
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Congress created income-driven repayment plans back in the 1990s to make student loan borrowers’ bills more affordable. The plans cap borrowers’ monthly payments at a share of their discretionary income and cancel any remaining debt after a certain period, typically 20 years or 25 years.
Borrowers enroll in the plans not just for lower payments, but also to seek loan forgiveness under a number of different options.
More than 12 million people were enrolled in IDR plans as of September 2024, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.