The College Investor Audio Show

International graduate enrollment at U.S. colleges fell again this year, and the financial damage is showing up fast in layoffs, budget deficits, and shuttered degree programs.For years, foreign graduate students were a quiet engine of university finances: paying full tuition, staffing research labs, and filling master's programs that schools built out to grow revenue. Now that engine is stalling. Tighter visa policies, thousands of revoked visas, and growing uncertainty about studying in the U.S. have cut into the pipeline, and the institutions that bet most heavily on international enrollment are the ones now scrambling to close the gap.

Sixty-two members of Congress are demanding the Department of Education act before millions more borrowers fall into default and they want answers by June 22.A June 7 letter (PDF File) led by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), along with Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and André Carson (D-Ind.), warns Education Secretary Linda McMahon that the U.S. is facing "the largest student loan default and delinquency crisis on record." This comes as the entire student loan system is changing on July 1 - from new repayment plans, loan caps, and borrowers in the SAVE plan being forced to leave forbearance.

Over the past several weeks we've heard multiple reports from graduate students about financial aid delays and miscommunication as they start summer classes. For medical, dental, and veterinary schools that start as early as May, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) changes are causing delays and chaos.One student reported that they received an inaccurate notice claiming they hit the updated graduate borrowing limits, while another was experiencing delayed loan disbursements. The result is fear, uncertainty, and in the case of delayed disbursements, true financial risk as many graduate students rely on their student loans to pay rent, buy food, and more.Here's what's happening.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies released its fiscal year 2027 spending bill (PDF File), and it pays for a Pell Grant increase by permanently ending subsidized federal student loans.The bill cuts the U.S. Department of Education's budget by 10%, or roughly $8 billion, with deep reductions to K-12 programs, Federal Work Study, and education research. It is the first step in a long appropriations process, but the headline tradeoff is clear: students gain a small Pell bump and lose one of the most affordable loans available to them.

The federal student loan system is about to see its biggest changes in decades — and most borrowers have no idea what's coming.In this episode, Robert Farrington sits down with U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent, the top federal official overseeing the $1.7 trillion student aid portfolio, to break down exactly what's changing on July 1 and what you need to do about it.They cover the end of the SAVE plan and the 90-day clock for borrowers to switch, the two new repayment options (the Repayment Assistance Plan and the new tiered standard plan), how RAP's interest subsidy can finally make your balance go down, first-ever borrowing limits for graduate and Parent PLUS loans, and why Kent says these caps are already pushing some schools to cut costs. Kent also shares his own story as a first-generation, low-income Pell Grant student and why broad student loan forgiveness "is not going to happen" under this administration.Whether you're in repayment, borrowing for grad school, or just trying to make sense of the headlines, this conversation gives you a clear, practical roadmap before the July 1 deadline.Follow The College Investor Audio Show so you never miss an episode — and share it with anyone navigating student loans right now.

Hampshire College and Anna Maria College have both announced plans to wind down, joining a a list of other colleges that have announced closures this year. Families committing tuition dollars now have a real interest in spotting financial trouble before it surfaces in a closure announcement.More than 30 New England colleges have closed or merged over the past decade, per the Boston Fed. Huron Consulting Group projects over a quarter of private, four-year schools could close or merge in the next ten years. Forbes' new College Financial Grades report shows clear balance sheet stress at hundreds of institutions.With these sobering stats in mind, how can you be sure your college will last? Here's what to watch out for.

The price a college advertises and the price a family actually pays out of pocket are two very different numbers, and the distance between them is rarely an accident. Behind the published sticker price sits a system of selective discounts, mandatory fees, and rules that can turn four years of tuition into five or six. Some of these practices have drawn federal scrutiny and lawsuits.Together they help explain why two students sitting in the same lecture hall can pay wildly different amounts for the same education.

Americans' financial literacy has slipped to its lowest level in a decade, according to the 2026 TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index released this month.U.S. adults correctly answered just 47% of the 28 P-Fin Index questions in 2026 — a significant drop from the prior year and the weakest result since the survey launched in 2017. The figure has never exceeded 52% over the decade.The share of adults with very low financial literacy (seven or fewer questions correct) rose from 20% in 2017 to 25% in 2026. The top of the distribution barely moved: just 15% answered 22 or more correctly, down one point from 2017.

The University of Missouri System Board of Curators voted unanimously Thursday to raise undergraduate tuition 4% across all four campuses for the 2026-27 academic year. Graduate tuition will rise 3%.The increase hits resident undergraduates at Mizzou (Columbia), UMSL, UMKC, and Missouri S&T at a moment when families are already absorbing FAFSA changes, new federal borrowing caps on Grad Loans and Parent PLUS loans, and the rollout of the RAP plan. A 4% bump also runs slightly above of the national pace for public four-year schools.

California State University, the largest public college system in the U.S., just voted to allow (PDF File) the creation of bachelor's degrees that can be completed in as little as three years. This is a massive shift that could reshape how working adults and community college transfers earn a credential.The first shortened degrees could launch as early as fall 2027, though 2028 is more likely.

The U.S. Department of Education has started emailing borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan a second round of reminders (which we're dubbing as "courtesy" notices) ahead of the formal transition emails set to start July 1, 2026.Why it matters: Around 7 million borrowers are still sitting in SAVE forbearance after a federal court order killed the plan. Once a borrower's servicer sends the official notice, a 90-day clock starts to pick a new repayment plan or the servicer will move the borrower into one automatically (likely the Standard Plan). Borrowers who still don't resume payments will being the path towards default.

Families comparing colleges usually start with the published tuition number. That number is rarely what they will actually owe. While most families don't pay sticker price, another line item is becoming a shocking addition: fees.Buried in the fine print, the mandatory student fee can add $1,000, $4,000, or even $8,000 to the annual bill before housing and food. At Southern Methodist University (SMU), the general student fee is rising to $4,040 per term in 2026-27, or roughly $8,080 across two semesters, on top of $63,376 in undergraduate tuition and fees published for 2026-27.Stack on the other charges colleges break out from headline tuition (recreation fees, student health fees, transit fees, technology fees, athletic fees) and the gap between sticker tuition and real out-of-pocket cost can run into five figures. For families building a college budget, the math gets harder still when a private school also requires a student or parent contribution that financial aid is not covering.These are the costs that make true apples-to-apples comparisons between schools almost impossible without a spreadsheet.

The U.S. Department of Education, with the Department of Treasury, plans to resume administrative wage garnishment on defaulted federal student loans this fall, restarting involuntary collections after a months-long pause announced earlier in 2026.The timing will likely reflect the end of the period of time for borrowers to select a new repayment plan. While specific details have not been announced, multiple members of the administration have pointed to getting borrowers back into repayment on their loans.

Student Defense co-founder Dan Zibel joins The College Investor at the ASU+GSV Summit to talk about how colleges are using AI in admissions, grading, and student lending — and why students deserve transparency about it.Recorded live at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, Robert Farrington sits down with Dan Zibel, co-founder of Student Defense, to talk about how artificial intelligence is reshaping higher education — from admissions decisions to classroom grading to student lending — and what students and families should be asking about it.

UC Irvine's Paul Merage School of Business is cutting tuition on its Flex MBA program by $30,000 and its Executive MBA by $48,000 starting this fall — a reduction of up to 38%. The school is openly framing the move as a response to new federal graduate borrowing limits that take effect July 1, 2026. However, this move raises more questions than answers.Why it matters: At the new $99,000 price tag, Merage's Flex MBA squeaks in just below the $100,000 lifetime aggregate cap on federal graduate borrowing established by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.The school's pitch: "University of California MBA is priced within reach of government loan limits — making a world-class degree not just aspirational, but truly attainable." This is one of the first explicit examples of a business school repricing a degree around the new federal lending rules.

Key federal databases that tracked American schools since 1962 is now running on outdated numbers. After Education Department gutted their research arm last year, large portions of the Digest of Education Statistics (covering per-student spending, teacher pay, enrollment, and student safety) have not been refreshed in more than a year.The Department says new contracts are coming, but the public (and researchers) are operating without current school data in the meantime.

Federal student loan interest rates are heading higher for the 2026-27 academic year, following Monday's May 10-year Treasury Note auction (PDF File). Undergraduate Stafford Loans will carry a 6.52% fixed rate, up from 6.392% a year earlier, with graduate and PLUS borrowers seeing similar increases of roughly 13 basis points.The new rates apply to federal student loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026, and remain fixed for the life of the loan.

The payment pause protecting borrowers in the SAVE plan is winding down, with loan servicers set to begin notifying borrowers starting July 1 to move into a new repayment plan.Once a borrower receives that notice, the clock starts: forbearance ends 90 days after the official notice is sent, which means most affected borrowers will be back in active repayment by the end of September 2026. This means either the borrower selects a new repayment plan, or will default back into the standard repayment plan.The bottom line - nearly all of these borrowers will have a payment due in October or November, whether they elect a repayment payment or not.

Financial planner and former college admissions consultant Tyler West joins The College Investor Audio Show at MilMoneyCon to talk about how families should actually approach paying for college — from 529 plans to commuter schools to the conversations parents aren't having with their kids.Recorded live at MilMoneyCon, Robert Farrington sits down with Tyler West, an associate financial planner at CL Sheldon & Company who works with military and veteran families. Before financial planning, Tyler served in the Army, worked in higher ed at the University of Colorado, and ran his own college planning business advising high-net-worth families on admissions and financial aid.His central message: families spend too much energy optimizing the savings vehicle and not enough on the conversation that actually determines whether the money is well spent.

Anna Maria College's closure announcement last week brought the 2026 U.S. nonprofit college shutdown count to eight. The 80-year-old institution in Paxton, Massachusetts said its Board of Trustees could no longer project the financial resources to sustain academic operations past the spring 2026 semester. This decision came less than two weeks after the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education formally flagged the college as a closure risk.Anna Maria's announcement came the same day workers at Hampshire College (which announced its own permanent closure on April 14) launched a relief fund ahead of June layoffs. Together, the two Massachusetts institutions underscored the accelerating pressure on small, tuition-dependent liberal arts colleges in the Northeast.Since the summer of 2025, a steady cadence of small-college shutdowns and high-profile mergers have reshaped parts of American higher education.A parallel trend has emerged: a growing number of schools are choosing merger or acquisition instead of winding down.

The U.S. Department of Education published its final rule implementing the student loan provisions of the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, ending Grad PLUS for new borrowers, capping Parent PLUS for the first time, narrowing the definition of "professional student", and consolidating the federal repayment system into two plans for new borrowers.Most provisions take effect July 1, 2026, with rehabilitation and deferment changes following on July 1, 2027, and the legacy income-contingent plans fully sunsetting on July 1, 2028.The 647-page rule (PDF File) follows a negotiated rulemaking process that opened in late 2025 and drew more than 80,000 public comments. The Department says the package will save taxpayers $409 billion and reduce student debt by $224 billion by curbing over-borrowing.

Higher education economist Preston Cooper joins The College Investor at the ASU+GSV Summit to talk about when a bachelor’s degree pays off, where grad school goes wrong, and how families should think about ROI in a labor market that is changing fast.Recorded live at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, Robert Farrington sits down with Preston Cooper, the researcher behind some of the most widely cited work on the return on investment of college and graduate school, to unpack what the numbers actually say — and what students and families should do with that information during admissions season.

The number of federal student loan repayment plans is shrinking. Starting July 1, 2026, new Direct Loan borrowers will only have access to two plans: the Tiered Standard Plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan, known as RAP.The Department of Education recently refreshed StudentAid for RAP, showing the repayment math, and how the plan's interest subsidy and matching principal benefit actually work.Here's a clear look at how RAP calculates your payment, who can use it, and the details that catch borrowers off guard: especially married couples and anyone with Parent PLUS debt.

A new Trellis Strategies survey (PDF File) of 3,182 former students who left college without a credential finds that financial pressure and life circumstances (not academic struggles) are the top reasons they walked away.This matters because students who leave college without a credential are usually the ones that face the most financial difficulty after leaving school. When you drop out of college, you still owe any you student loan debt you've already taken and may face repayment of other aid.

Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent told an American Enterprise Institute audience on Thursday that federal student loan forgiveness “is not happening,” highlighting the administration’s tone as it moves defaulted accounts to the Treasury Department and winds down the SAVE plan.This comes from a livestream Q&A session, which marks one of the most public conversations yet around the massive changes to student loans coming this year.

A federal judge has approved a $425 million class action settlement with Capital One over allegations that the bank paid low interest rates to older 360 Savings account holders while offering a nearly identical product (360 Performance Savings) at substantially higher rates.U.S. District Judge David J. Novak signed the final approval order on April 20, 2026 (PDF File), clearing the way for payments to go out to millions of eligible customers. Capital One denies any wrongdoing.Compare the best high-yield savings accounts today here >>

High school seniors heading to public four-year colleges this fall could graduate with more than $43,000 in student loans, according to a new NerdWallet analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data.Why It Matters: The projection lands as federal repayment plans change on July 1, the SAVE plan ends, and AI pressure on entry-level jobs pushes more students to question whether a bachelor's degree still pencils out.

Hundreds of thousands of federal student loan borrowers in default could start hearing from the government and their debt collectors as soon as July, as the Treasury Department prepares to take over a piece of the Education Department's collection work, Politico reported.Why It Matters: This would be the first major step in moving the $1.7 trillion federal student loan portfolio out of the Education Department and the first sustained collection contact most defaulted borrowers have received since the Covid-era payment pause began in March 2020. Collections have been delayed various times since that paused ended in 2023.

A group of Democratic senators led by Tim Kaine (D-VA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution (PDF File) this week to overturn the Trump administration’s new PSLF rule that gives Education Secretary Linda McMahon authority to disqualify certain public service employers from the program. A companion resolution was introduced in the House by Reps. Joe Courtney (D-CT), Alma Adams (D-NC), and Scott Peters (D-CA).The resolution currently has 27 Senate cosponsors, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Once the senators collect 30 signatures, the resolution can be called for a floor vote, where it would need a simple majority to pass.

The Big Number: $1 billion — that’s how much the Department of Education says it saved taxpayers by cracking down on student aid fraud over the past year.Why It Matters: The Department of Education announced that its identity verification requirements for first-time FAFSA applicants, launched in summer 2025, have blocked more than $1 billion in fraudulent federal student aid. The fraud prevention push came after colleges and universities across the country reported being targeted by sophisticated fraud rings that exploited weakened safeguards during the Covid-19 pandemic.That created openings for criminals to file fake FAFSA applications and siphon Pell Grants and federal student loans meant for legitimate students and families.

The Department of Education processed more IDR applications in March than any month since court-ordered tracking began, cutting the pending backlog to 553,966. That is down from 576,609 in February and from nearly 2 million in April 2025. The March status report (PDF File), filed today in federal court, also shows IDR loan forgiveness resumed after two consecutive months of zero discharges.

The PSLF Buyback backlog grew to 89,720 pending applications in March, according to the latest court-ordered status report (PDF File) filed today. The Department of Education decided just 3,280 applications during the month. At that pace, borrowers at the back of the queue face a wait of over two years. But here’s the part that isn’t getting enough attention: a significant portion of these applications will likely be denied or closed — not because borrowers don’t qualify, but because they’ll finish PSLF the normal way before their buyback application is ever processed.

College remains a strong financial investment, and the latest data from College Board makes that case with the most recent numbers available. The Education Pays 2026 report (PDF File), shows that workers with a bachelor’s degree continue to significantly out-earn their peers with only a high school diploma and that the gap shows no signs of closing.In 2024, the median earnings of bachelor’s degree recipients age 25 and older working full time were $81,800, compared to $50,600 for high school graduates. That’s a $31,200 difference (62% more) every single year. After accounting for taxes, bachelor’s degree holders took home $22,200 more annually, a 56% premium in after-tax income.The report comes at a time when public confidence in higher education has declined. A 2025 Gallup survey found that the cost of college is one of the top reasons Americans feel less confident about the value of a degree. But the data tells a more nuanced story: one where the financial returns still hold up, even after factoring in tuition, student loan debt, and years of forgone earnings.

Parents buying life insurance or opening retirement accounts usually want to name their children as beneficiaries (typically as a contingent beneficiary after a spouse). It feels like the obvious choice — if something happens to you, the money should go to your kids.But naming a minor child directly as a beneficiary is one of the most common and disruptive estate planning mistakes a parent can make, and it can tie up the very money your family needs most during an already difficult time.The problem is odd: minors cannot legally enter contracts in most states. A bank account is a contract with the bank. A brokerage account with the broker. Minors typically have to have a parent (or guardian) to open said account. And if parent is gone, it gets tricky.When a life insurance company or retirement plan custodian tries to distribute funds to a child under 18, it can hit a legal wall. The money can’t be released. And what follows is a court process that no grieving family should have to navigate.

You spent thousands on an estate plan. You signed the will. You funded the trust. And none of it may matter because a beneficiary form you filled out 15 years ago when you started a new job could override everything.Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and payable-on-death bank accounts are legally binding contracts. They operate entirely outside your will and trust. When these forms are outdated, incomplete, or misaligned with the rest of your plan, the result can be assets going to an ex-spouse, a child being accidentally disinherited, or a six-figure tax bill no one saw coming.According to Caring.com’s 2025 estate planning survey, only 24% of American adults have a will — down from 33% in 2022. But even among the minority who do plan, beneficiary designation errors remain one of the most common and costly oversights. Here are five mistakes you need to avoid.

The U.S. Department of Education, working with its Office of Inspector General, says it has uncovered tens of millions of dollars in fraud and mismanagement tied to COVID-19 pandemic education relief funds. This is part of the Trump Administration's broader push to crack down on waste across federal education programs.Why it matters: Congress distributed roughly $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds across three rounds between 2020 and 2021. This is more than three times what the federal government typically spends on K-12 education annually. The Department says much of it went out with weak safeguards and reduced oversight, creating openings for bad actors to exploit.

A brief summary of this episode

A brief summary of this episode