On February 15, 2025, I received notice from my loan servicer that my student loans had been forgiven under Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), effective October 2024.

I entered the nonprofit workforce over a decade ago, knowing this field often offers lower pay, because I was driven by a desire to serve my community. PSLF rewarded the commitment and made it possible for me to build a career in public service without being held back by student debt.

I’ve worked in the nonprofit sector since 2014 and never missed a payment on my student loans. But for years, I wasn’t on the “right” repayment plan, and some of my loans had not been consolidated and didn’t qualify for forgiveness. It felt impossible that my loans might ever get forgiven.

I was doing my best to follow the rules as I understood them, but it wasn’t until the Biden Administration made long-overdue fixes to the PSLF program that my path to forgiveness became possible.

Now, the US Department of Education is taking public comments through May 8, 2025 about potential changes to PSLF and income-driven repayment plans. Congress is also taking these issues on through the budget reconciliation process. What happens next could directly impact whether a generation of public service workers (our nonprofit workforce, government workers, teachers, social workers, healthcare professionals, etc) can count on these programs in the future.

Here’s what’s at stake:

• Who qualifies for PSLF: There is dangerous rhetoric coming from the current Administration (and various lawmakers) that workers at certain nonprofits doing work vilified by the Administration–such as those serving immigrants, providing reproductive health care, serving trans individuals, addressing climate change, or racial justice– should not qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. This effort to politicize which nonprofits “qualify” goes against what PSLF was created to do; PSLF was created to support important work in our communities, whether politically popular or not.
• What repayment plans are available: The SAVE plan, developed under the Biden Administration, made huge strides in keeping payments more affordable and keeping interest from spiraling out of control. Now, legal challenges and opposition from the current Administration have thrown the SAVE plan and borrowers on the SAVE Plan into limbo. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have proposed eliminating current IDR plans like PAYE, ICR, and SAVE and replacing them with a single “Repayment Assistance Plan,” which offers fewer protections, longer repayment timelines, and more financial hardship for borrowers of all political stripes. Everyone deserves access to affordable payment plans and fewer obstacles to forgiveness.
• Whether the system gets easier or harder to navigate: We should be making loan repayment and forgiveness more accessible and less confusing. Too many people have lost progress towards forgiveness because of technicalities, administrative mistakes, and unclear rules.

Here’s what you can do today:

1. Submit a public comment to the Department of Education by 11:59pm tonight, May 8th, to tell the DOE why these programs matter.
   • Here’s a link to HSC’s public comment.
2. Share your story (especially with your elected officials) if you’re a nonprofit worker navigating PSLF and student loan repayment.
3. Spread the word and encourage the people around you to speak up too!

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