Student loan interest restarting for 8 million borrowers

Also, nearly 8 million borrowers whose student loan payments have been paused for a year will see interest accrue in August. And this is all part of an effort to comply with the April ruling the Trump administration says struck down SAVE. Education Secretary Linda McMahon is urging those borrowers to transition to a different plan. Joining us now with what you need to know, the Wisconsin Coalition of Student Debts Executive Director Carol Trohn. Welcome to Live at 4, Carol. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here. So do people on the SAVE plan, do they need to start thinking about a transition and how do they do that? What's the next step? Good question. So certainly everyone should be thinking about it. If every kind of borrower, they need to log into their studentaid.gov account, they should see what all their loans are, see what programs they're in. Now with the SAVE program, last week's announcement is going to restart interest. That's something new. What has not changed as of today is that the loans in SAVE are still in forbearance. And so if borrowers who are in the SAVE program want to know, should I move out of it? What they need to do is there's a loan tool on the studentaid.gov website. And they should plug in their information and look at that and see if it makes sense. Because if they're moving to another kind of loan program, it will likely have different kinds of payments, maybe higher payments. So now is the time to start acting. And from what I understand and see here, in one year there will be new caps on certain kinds of loans as well? And how will that impact people? It is a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. And many of us are looking at this and saying, these are changes in this recently passed bill that are the biggest probably in a generation for higher education. So the loan caps will affect people. First of all, they kick in next year. Anyone who is currently in a program, currently in school, they can continue with the current program that they have. But these loan limits will affect undergraduates who are dependents, whose parents are taking out Parent PLUS loans. So those will be new caps. And then at the graduate level and professional level. So these will be caps, graduate programs, 100,000, professional, 200,000. And what we're looking at, I mean, these are early days. What we're looking at is how this is going to affect who decides to go to medical school or dental school or law school. Because those numbers are actually small when you consider what it costs to get those degrees. Right. They're lower. And it may affect, we already have physician shortages in rural areas and in primary care. And so this may really determine or deter some people from thinking about going into those service areas. Yeah. So if I'm a borrower and I'm kind of panicking right now because a lot of this stuff is complicated, is there a helpline or anything that I can call? There is a helpline. How about that? Yes. We know there are, you know, there's something like 700,000 borrowers in Wisconsin, you know, with student loan debt. And so our organization has a helpline. It's 833-589-0750. You'll talk to a real person, 8 to 430 Central. And then we also have an email, which is studentloanquestionsatdebtsmarts.org. Sometimes it helps to have someone kind of walk you through it or just give you a little boost. Exactly. Well, Carol, thank you very much for being on with us today. Carol, that was very helpful. Thanks. A lot to take in, but we can find a lot more information for you too. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.