Errors in the student-loan repayment system have made their way into the courts.
On Monday, the Department of Education corrected a legal filing in an ongoing case filed by student-loan borrowers to restore the benefits of REPAYE, a precursor to the Biden-era SAVE repayment plan.
The department had previously told the court that five borrowers in the case reported incomes of $0. However, the borrowers said that was wrong; they had already shown the department they earned more than that.
This seemingly-innocuous detail matters because if the borrowers truly had no income, they would likely already qualify for low payments under an existing repayment plan. That would undermine their argument for restoring REPAYE, namely that they need its specific benefits.
In the corrected filing, department loan analyst Anthony Lowery said the mistake came from an error in the National Student Loan Data Service, the federal database the government uses to track student loans. A 2024 NSLDS system update removed some older data, he said, meaning some borrowers' income information was not retained.
"I was not aware that NSLDS records a borrower's income as $0 when the system has no data," Lowery said.
This is the latest update in an ongoing case pushing to make the benefits of REPAYE available to borrowers and to pause the forced transfer of borrowers off the SAVE plan. Beginning July 1, SAVE borrowers began receiving their 90-day timeframe to transition to a new plan. If they do not act within that timeframe, they'll automatically be placed on a standard plan with higher monthly payments.
Borrowers are still awaiting a ruling on whether the involuntary transfer will be paused; the earliest the transfer would occur is September 29.
Aside from the NSLDS error referenced in the corrected declaration, borrowers for months have reported a range of glitches with their payments, including inaccurate bills and erroneous past-due notices. The Education Department said it is aware of the errors and has fixed them as they arose.
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Ayelet Sheffey is a senior reporter at Business Insider covering education and student loans. She has appeared on shows including C-SPAN, CBS News, NPR, and SiriusXM to discuss her student-loan coverage, including her investigation on private student-loan lending.She graduated from American University in 2020 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. You can reach her via email at [email protected] or message her securely on Signal at asheffey.97. You can also find her on LinkedIn, and on Reddit at the username u/higheredjourno.
