Student Loan Interest Jumps This Week For 7.7 Million Borrowers
Millions of federal student loan borrowers will see their interest rates jump this week as the Trump administration moves forward to end benefits for borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan.
For more than a year, nearly eight million borrowers who had enrolled in the SAVE plan have remained in a forced administrative forbearance due to a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican-led states. The involuntary forbearance, which has suspended monthly payments and set interest rates to zero since last summer, was put into effect after a federal appeals court issued an injunction blocking SAVE while the legal challenge proceeded.
But following the Trump administration's announcement earlier this month that interest accrual will resume during the SAVE plan forbearance, millions of borrowers will see their rates jump from zero percent to the interest rates established by their loan promissory note, which could be anywhere from around five percent to more than eight percent. The Department of Education characterized the move as necessary 'to bring fiscal responsibility to the federal student loan portfolio" in a statement issued earlier this month.
The student loan interest rate hike will go into effect on Friday, August 1. Here's what borrowers need to know.
Department Of Education Blames Court Ruling For Student Loan Interest Resumption
The Trump administration suggested that the resumption of interest for SAVE plan borrowers was the result of another recent court ruling in the ongoing litigation over the future of the program.
'The Department will take this action to comply with a federal court injunction that has blocked implementation of the SAVE Plan, including the Department's action to put SAVE borrowers in a zero percent interest rate status,' said the department in its prior statement. 'The Department had the authority under the SAVE plan to prevent borrowers from going into negative amortization, which is the authority the Department relied on to put borrowers in zero percent interest rate status. Outside of that regulatory provision in SAVE (which is enjoined), the Department lacks the authority to put borrowers into a zero percent interest rate status.'
However, critics of the move argued that nothing in the recent rulings associated with the SAVE plan litigation requires that the department start charging interest again. And no court has ordered the department to do so.
'No court has ordered the Department to resume charging interest to borrowers in the SAVE forbearance,' said the Student Borrower Protection Center in an analysis after the department's announcement. 'On February 18, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld the District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri's preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the SAVE plan itself, and instructed the lower court to widen the injunction in accordance with its analysis. Nowhere in the 8th Circuit's opinion or order is there any discussion of the legality of the Department's temporary, interest-free SAVE forbearance.'
Student Loan Payments For SAVE Plan Will Remain Paused For Now
While interest will start accruing again on August 1 for federal student loans that are in the involuntary SAVE plan forbearance, borrowers still won't have to make payments, at least for the time being.
'Under this general forbearance, you don't have to make your monthly payments on your student loans,' says updated Department of Education guidance. But, 'interest does accrue, starting Aug. 1, 2025.'
The time spent in the forbearance still won't count toward student loan forgiveness under income-driven repayment plans or Public Service Loan Forgiveness. That has been the case since last year, and that won't change once interest starts accruing again.
The SBPC argued that even though payments aren't due, borrowers in the SAVE plan forbearance will still pay a price for the department's decisions to restart interest, as their overall balances increase over time.
'Nearly 8 million people will be charged $27 billion in interest charges each year,' said the SBPC in its analysis. 'Borrowers from working class families will bear the brunt of these costs. We estimate that over 40% of the borrowers who would be forced to pay interest while in forbearance make under 225% of the federal poverty line.' The SBPC also found that the lowest income borrowers will be charged more than $3,000 per year in interest as a result of the department's decision.
Student Loan Borrowers In SAVE Plan Will Eventually Need To Switch
While those in the SAVE plan forbearance don't yet need to make payments on their student loans, even as interest starts accruing again, these borrowers will eventually need to switch plans, as SAVE will not be returning.
Earlier this month, President Trump signed the 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' reconciliation legislation that passed Congress on a party-line vote. The bill repeals SAVE, as well as the PAYE and ICR plans, by July 1, 2028. Prior to that date, borrowers will need to switch to a different repayment plan.
For those borrowers who want to continue making payments based on their income, their only choices would be Income-Based Repayment, or IBR, which is the only current IDR option preserved by the bill; or, they will need to select the Repayment Assistance Plan, a new IDR program that the bill directs the Department of Education to create. While RAP retains some of the key benefits of the SAVE plan, such as a subsidy designed to prevent student loan balances from ballooning over time due to interest accrual, many borrowers will have higher monthly payments under RAP than they would have had under SAVE. And borrowers will have to make payments for far longer under RAP (in some cases, for an 10 additional years) before they can qualify for student loan forgiveness.
So far, the Department of Education has not provided SAVE plan borrowers with concrete information on when they will need to select a different repayment plan. While the 'Big, Beautiful Bill' indicates that SAVE would be officially repealed by July 1, 2028, most observers expect the department to force borrowers to switch repayment plans much sooner than that, particularly if a federal court winds up striking down the program entirely.
Options For Student Loan Borrowers
Student loan borrowers in the SAVE plan forbearance who are concerned about the resumption of interest accrual have a menu of imperfect options.
They can remain in the SAVE plan forbearance even while interest accrues, given that payments still aren't due. But that means that their student loan balances will start increasing again, which could increase their monthly payments once the forbearance ends if they opt out of income-driven repayment altogether.
Alternatively, borrowers can make voluntary payments while in the SAVE plan forbearance to cut down on the interest accrual. But voluntary payments made while their student loans are in a forbearance status would still not count toward student loan forgiveness under both IDR and PSLF.
Another option is changing to a different repayment plan, which the Department of Education is encouraging borrowers to do.
'The Department urges all borrowers in the SAVE Plan to quickly transition to a legally compliant repayment plan – such as the Income-Based Repayment Plan,' said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement earlier in July. "Borrowers in SAVE cannot access important loan benefits and cannot make progress toward loan discharge programs authorized by Congress.'
However, the department has also paused student loan forgiveness under the IBR plan, and has provided no timeline on when loan forgiveness processing will resume. Meanwhile, the department is contending with a massive backlog of more than 1.5 million IDR applications. The department has indicated that borrowers who apply online to switch IDR plans and utilize the IRS data retrieval tool to import their income information into the online application can expect faster processing, notwithstanding the backlog.
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