Student loan forgiveness in the IBR plan is paused, Education Department says. Here's what to know.
Source: CBS News
July 23, 2025 / 2:48 PM EDT
Millions of people with student loans who are enrolled in a popular repayment plan are now in limbo, with the Department of Education saying it has temporarily paused forgiveness for borrowers in its income-based repayment plan, or IBR. Such plans offer a double benefit for borrowers by lowering a person's monthly loan repayment to reflect their income, while also promising to provide forgiveness after a number of years. Specifically, the government can cancel the balance of student loan after people have made payments for at least 20 years.
About 40% of the roughly 33 million people repaying student loans were enrolled in one of the Education Department's four such repayment plans at the end of 2024, according to data from the National Student Loan Data System and the Government Accountability Office. But three of those programs had previously been halted by a court ruling, while forgiveness for the roughly 2 million people enrolled in the fourth — IBR — is now also paused.
On Tuesday, Education Department deputy press secretary Ellen Keast told CBS MoneyWatch that the agency "has temporarily paused discharges for IBR borrowers in order to comply with ongoing court injunctions regarding the Biden Administration's illegal attempts at student loan forgiveness."
The court injunctions stem from 2024 lawsuits related to the Biden administration's flagship student loan repayment plan, called the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan. That initiative, created to fix long-standing issues with the Education Department's previous income-based plans, proved popular with borrowers, with almost 8 million enrollees at the end of 2024, National Student Loan Data System data shows.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/student-loan-forgiveness-ibr-debt-payments-education-department-cbs-news-explains/