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Deadline Tomorrow at 5 p.m. EST: Take Action for Fair Student Loan Payments

Still paying off your federal student loans? Two new programs, Income-Based Repayment (IBR) and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, could make your loans more affordable. But if you really want these programs to work to your advantage, you should share your feedback with the United States Department of Education today!


IBR will cap your monthly payment to a reasonable percentage of income, limit interest build-up, and forgive remaining debt after 25 years of IBR payments, starting in July 2009. Government and nonprofit employees with high debt burdens could get their loans forgiven after ten years of eligible work and repayment. The U.S. Department of Education has issued proposed rules for these programs, but to make sure they really work for borrowers, the decision-makers need to hear from you before tomorrow, August 15.

According to IBRinfo.org, there are two major problems with the proposed rules:

• In IBR, some married borrowers would have to pay up to twice as much in loan payments as unmarried borrowers in otherwise identical situations.


• Borrowers could be left in the dark for years about whether or not their jobs are eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

Want to raise your voice about that? Submit your comments today. Sign or edit the Project on Student Debt’s sample message, and they will deliver your comments to the Department of Education.

To learn more about IBR and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, visit IBRinfo.org.


This post courtesy of Meg, co-author of The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers. Visit www.idealist.org/beginacareer to download The Guide for free.