Higher Ed Policy Roundup: Vol. 5 - Issue 55

Late last week, the Education Department (ED) published a Federal Register Notice asking for public comments on a request for an emergency clearance for new information collection for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. According to ED, the information collection will be used to get information from borrowers to determine eligibility for reconsideration of their PSLF or Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness denial based on payment counts or employer eligibility. The comment period deadline is March 29, 2022 and comments can be submitted here.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a new blog post titled: Student Loan Repayment during the Pandemic Forbearance. Based on experiences of FFEL borrowers during the pandemic, the author believes that Direct Loan borrowers will face higher delinquency rates once the payment pause ends.

The California Policy Lab and Student Loan Law Initiative released a study showing that the average credit score among pause-affected borrowers increased nearly 30 points since 2020. The report also noted that nearly three in ten borrowers – about 7.8 million individuals – are at high risk of missing payments once the pause expires in May.

There were no relevant student-aid related bills recently introduced for consideration by the 117th Congress (2021-2022).