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The Justice Department announced Monday that it is investigating whether Harvard University's financial aid practices discriminate against American students, opening a compliance review under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 focused on scholarship programs funded by China-based donors.At the center of the investigation is a question with implications far beyond just Harvard: can a university accept foreign donations that come with strings attached (specifically, requirements that the money fund financial aid favoring students from particular countries) while also receiving federal dollars that prohibit discrimination based on national origin?"Every American student should have an equal opportunity to compete for college scholarships, grants, and other kinds of financial aid and benefits," said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division. "Schools cannot take federal dollars and then turn around and accept money from foreign sources to give financial aid that deliberately excludes American citizens — doing so is illegal, and we will stop it wherever we find it."The department stressed it has not reached any conclusions. Harvard, in a statement to The Harvard Crimson, said it "does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin in allocating financial aid" and that it is reviewing the letter and will engage with the government.

Americans' confidence in higher education slipped to 38% this year, down from 42% in 2025, according to the new Lumina Foundation-Gallup Confidence in Higher Education survey. The drop erases most of the modest recovery colleges saw last year.The survey, conducted in June 2026, found that 38% of U.S. adults have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education, 37% have "some," and 25% have "very little" or none. When Gallup first asked the question in 2015, 57% of Americans expressed strong confidence.

Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute has given Google Search's AI Overview and AI Mode its lowest possible rating (an "unacceptable risk" for kids and teens) after seven weeks of testing found the features failed all five of the group's severe-harm "Red Lines," fabricated facts with confidence, and cannot be turned off by parents, schools, or users.The assessment, published July 14, 2026, tested more than 2,600 interactions on accounts registered to an 11-year-old and a 15-year-old, both with SafeSearch active.

New IRS data shows that the dreaded 529 plan penalty is far less common, and far less painful, than most families fear.According to the IRS Statistics of Income division's line item estimates for tax year 2023 (the most recent year with data available, released in June 2026) just 165,152 tax returns paid the 10% additional tax on non-qualified distributions from 529 plans and education savings accounts, totaling $76.6 million. That works out to an average penalty of about $464 per return for people reporting 529 plan distributions.Out of the more than 160 million individual returns filed for 2023, roughly 0.1% paid this penalty at all.

Nelnet has quietly revised its end-of-SAVE-plan FAQ to shorten its notice timeline: every 90-day notice from the servicer will now go out by the end of 2026. The FAQ previously said notices would be delivered between July 2026 and March 2027, a window Nelnet has now cut by three months.The updated FAQ states: "Nelnet is notifying nearly three million Nelnet borrowers, so we're reaching out in waves. You'll receive your notice by the end of 2026."

Employer contributions to Trump Accounts become legal on July 4, 2026 — one year to the day after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act created the new children's savings accounts. For small business owners, the launch opens a question worth real money: can your business fund your own kids' accounts with pre-tax dollars?The answer appears to be yes for many owners, but the mechanics matter. The tax break runs through new Internal Revenue Code Section 128, which lets an employer contribute up to $2,500 per year to the Trump Account of an employee or an employee's dependent without the amount counting as taxable income to the employee.For a solopreneur who is also an employee of their own company, that can mean a business deduction on one side and no income tax on the other — a combination that is hard to find elsewhere in the code.But the provision comes with paperwork requirements, contribution caps, and several unresolved questions the IRS has not yet answered. Here is what the rules require, where the opportunity sits for owner-operators, and the mistakes that could undo the benefit.

The job hasn't changed, but the degree required to get it has. Over the past three decades, one profession after another has raised its educational entry price: a bachelor's became a master's...a master's became a doctorate...a short training course became a year of mandatory classes.These new requirements are adding years of tuition and borrowing for careers that pay roughly what they paid before the new requirements were added. The labor market simply doesn't pay more because you got more education.Economists call it degree inflation, and the most surprising part isn't the cost. It's who decides "what's required". In many licensed fields, the degree you must "buy" isn't set by Congress or your state legislature. It's set by private organizations most Americans have never heard of: accrediting agencies.And because of how the higher education system is wired, a single change by one of these groups can raise the required degree standards for an entire profession in all 50 states at once, with no election, no hearing in your statehouse, and no vote by anyone you can vote out.That system is now squarely in Washington's crosshairs. The Department of Education's negotiated rulemaking committee reached consensus on May 21, 2026, on new regulations that would put a stop to this practice. The Department had named "credential inflation" as an explicit target when it launched the committee in January.To understand why that matters for your family's college costs, you first have to understand a system that almost nobody outside higher education knows exists.

A new federal lawsuit is trying to answer a question more than 1.5 million student loan borrowers have been asking: did the Department of Education actually cancel the loans it publicly promised to forgive?The Project on Predatory Student Lending (PPSL) sued the Department (PDF File) on July 1, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, after the agency sat on fifteen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests (some for more than two and a half years) seeking records on how it carried out its announced group discharges.The College Investor team has previously filed similar FOIA requests for borrower defense data, the latest with a response in 2023, which took roughly 14 months to process.

Student loan borrowers who applied for the SAVE plan but were never officially enrolled are now receiving denial letters from their loan servicers. These are borrowers who submitted an application for SAVE or an old application selecting the option "Lowest Repayment Plan", but their applications were never actually processed. These borrowers had been in administrative forbearance while waiting for an outcome to their application.Borrowers have 90 days to submit a new income-driven repayment (IDR) application or their SAVE forbearance ends and payments resume on their old plan.Hundreds of thousands of borrowers submitted IDR applications requesting SAVE and have been sitting in a administrative forbearance (some for well over two years) waiting for an answer. That answer has now arrived: denied.Unlike borrowers officially enrolled in SAVE, who get auto-enrolled in the Standard or Tiered Standard plan if they miss their 90-day deadline, applicants who miss the deadline get kicked back to their previous repayment plan, or the Standard plan if they weren't enrolled in a plan before (such as new borrowers leaving college). For many, that could mean a payment far higher than what they expected under an income-driven plan.

A pair of Democratic bills introduced in May would eliminate one of the oldest restrictions in federal student loan policy: the rule that blocks teachers from counting the same years of teaching service toward both Teacher Loan Forgiveness (TLF) and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).The Teacher Debt Relief Act (H.R.8815), introduced May 14, 2026 by Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) and endorsed by the National Education Association, would end the prohibition that forces teachers to choose one program or the other for a given service period. Hayes calls it a technical correction, but for teachers, it could shave years off the path to full forgiveness.Here's what to know about the drive to end the double-dipping provision of PSLF and TLF.

Formal 90-day notices began going out to more than 7 million SAVE borrowers on July 1, arriving in waves. Borrowers who don't choose a new repayment plan by their deadline (roughly September 30 for the first group) will be placed on the Standard plan automatically.In response, a common refrain has emerged in comment sections and forums: "I refuse to switch until I'm notified I have to. That way, if any new court action benefits SAVE borrowers, it will still apply to me because I'm technically still registered under SAVE."It makes it sound like waiting in the SAVE forbearance could be a smart move. But when you walk through every scenario that could actually unfold (the pending lawsuit, a forbearance extension, and the even longer-shot wildcards) the strategy delivers almost nothing different that switching wouldn't also deliver, while the costs of waiting increase every month.The simple truth is that waiting only preserves your no-payment forbearance. Your loan balance is growing, you're not making progress towards forgiveness, and the longer you wait, the more likely you are to have even higher payments in the future.Here's what to know about each scenario and how it could impact you as a SAVE borrower thinking about waiting it out.

For most borrowers after July 1, 2026, consolidating federal student loans no longer offers a real upside — and it can quietly erase progress you've already earned towards loan forgiveness. The one situation where it still helps is getting out of default.Consolidation used to be a helpful tool for many borrowers. It turned old FFEL loans into Direct Loans, unlocked income-driven repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), and let borrowers capture the one-time IDR account adjustment. Those windows have closed. The adjustment is over, FFEL cleanup deadlines have passed, and the menu of repayment plans is shrinking — so the cost-benefit math has flipped for most people.There is no real requirement for any borrower to consolidate their loans at this point in time, and except for defaulted student loan borrowers, doing so may be more harmful than helpful.

The U.S. Department of Education announced a final rule that will, for the first time, strip federal student loan eligibility from college and career programs whose graduates fail to out-earn workers who never enrolled.The Student Tuition and Transparency System (STATS) and Earnings Accountability rule applies a single standard across every sector of higher education, from public universities to for-profit certificate schools, regardless of an institution's tax status or the credential it awards.The premise is simple: undergraduate programs must demonstrate that their graduates earn more than working adults who hold only a high school diploma. Graduate programs must show their completers earn more than typical bachelor's degree holders. A program that can't clear that bar for two of three years will lose the ability to enroll students who borrow federal loans. That doesn't mean it has to shut down - but the government is not going to continue to lend to students who end up having a bad financial outcome."If a program cannot show that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers," said Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent. He pointed to "rising rates of default and delinquency in the $1.7 trillion federal student loan portfolio" as the backdrop for the new framework.The rule is the third and final rulemaking package authorized by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Trump signed on July 4, 2025. It also folds the new earnings standard into the Department's existing Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment regulations, replacing what officials described as nearly two decades of regulatory back-and-forth with one test that reaches almost every program and sector.

The biggest overhaul of federal student loans in a generation just took effect. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, borrowers who take out federal loans on or after July 1, 2026 face fewer repayment options, hard borrowing caps, and slightly higher interest rates.While many of these changes apply to new loans going forward, some borrowers do have choices to make. For example, borrowers in the SAVE forbearance will have to start making decisions to change repayment plans. It's important to remember that current borrowers keep their existing fixed interest rates and access to legacy plans like IBR — but anyone borrowing for the coming school year is entering a very different system.

Home / News / ED Expands Professional Degree List to 29 Programs After Court StayED Expands Professional Degree List to 29 Programs After Court StayUpdated: June 30, 2026 By Robert Farrington | < 1 Min Read Leave a Comment (Edit)Many or all of the products featured here may be from our partners who compensate us. This doesn't influence our evaluations or reviews. Our opinions are our own. Investing information is for educational purposes only. Learn more here. The Department of Education has temporarily widened the types of degree programs that qualify for the higher professional-student loan limits, adding fields like physician assistant, physical therapy, occupational therapy, audiology, and several advanced nursing degrees while the agency's narrower rule is paused in court.In Electronic Announcement GENERAL-26-42, posted June 29, ED published an updated list of Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) codes that schools must treat as professional degree programs for federal loan limit purposes. The list now covers 29 six-digit CIP codes, well beyond the 11 fields ED originally named in its Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) final rule.The change is a direct response to a court order. On June 24, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia preliminarily stayed part of ED's professional degree definition just days before the rule's July 1 effective date.

A federal judge has thrown out the Department of Education's controversial new Public Service Loan Forgiveness rule, ruling it unlawful one day before it was scheduled to take effect.In a 68-page decision issued June 30, 2026, U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun of the District of Massachusetts (PDF File) held that the rule was "contrary to law," exceeded the Department's statutory authority, was "arbitrary and capricious," and violated the First Amendment.His order vacated the rule entirely.There's another case in the District of Columbia that's also about this same rule, still waiting on a ruling as of writing.

The two largest faculty unions in the country are drawing a line against three-year bachelor's degrees, just as more states moves to make them real.The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) issued a joint statement opposing accelerated degrees after Massachusetts approved its first pilot programs. The pushback lands the same week Virginia and Ohio announced a partnership to design their own shorter pathways.It follows a trend of over 60 colleges and university systems working on building three year degree programs.

Syracuse University Chancellor J. Michael Haynie told the community last week that it will not hit its undergraduate enrollment target for the fall and, as a result, will run a budget deficit "something the University has not experienced in quite some time."His letter framed the shortfall as the product of national forces: a shrinking pool of 18-year-olds, fierce competition for students, and a drop in international applications tied to visa problems and federal policy.While that backdrop is true, we believe it to be only partly responsible for Syracuse's downfall. Haynie's letter casts the deficit as the "new normal" for "even strong, well-resourced universities" — a framing that quietly recasts a Syracuse problem as everyone's problem.Syracuse spent the past several years making a series of financial and communication decisions that alienated the very families it now needs. Plenty of peer schools face the same demographic and policy headwinds, but have been seeing record applications and normal enrollment.The "new normal" is true and smaller private universities do face headwinds and risks, but much of what Syracuse is facing is self-inflicted.

The future of student loan repayment for SAVE borrowers has been finalized by a court settlement, and the exodus will start on July 1, 2026 in tranches of individual borrowers.According to the most recent communication from the Department of Education, student loan servicers will begin sending official notices to borrowers in SAVE starting July 1, 2026. These notices will come in tranches, roughly two weeks apart. Once a borrower receives their notice, they will have 90 days to select a new repayment plan. The current available repayment plan options are:StandardTiered Standard (launches on July 1)IBRRAP (launches on July 1)PAYE (ends in 2028)ICR (ends in 2028)When pressed on the final end date for all borrowers, we couldn't get an exact answer.This timeline aligns with our earlier expectation we placed of 70% likelihood that a move would happen July 1

Robert joined the Money Life Show with Chuck Jaffe to talk about the latest updates with student loans: new repayment plan changes and new student loan limits that go into effect this week.If you have student loans, or are planning on borrowing student loans, here's what you need to know.Check out the Money Life Show with Chuck Jaffe here.

A coalition of states is pressing a federal judge (PDF File) to halt the Department of Education's new Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) rule before it takes effect July 1, 2026. This comes after the Department moved to add a sworn attestation to the program's certification forms in a Federal Register notice (PDF File).The new rule lets the Secretary of Education strip PSLF eligibility from employers (including state and local governments) that the Department decides have a "substantial illegal purpose." The form change would require employers to confirm, under penalty of perjury, that they have not engaged in such activity. For more millions of public service workers, an employer's disqualification can mean losing access to loan forgiveness.PSLF has canceled more than $85 billion in federal student loans for over one million borrowers since the program began. The Department estimates the revised certification form covers roughly 913,713 responses a year.

The U.S. Department of Education announced that its quadrupling the interest rate discount for federal student loan borrowers who enroll in autopay, raising it from 0.25% to a full 1 percentage point starting July 1, 2026.Borrowers who sign up for automatic payments (or who are already enrolled) will get a 1% reduction on their federal student loan interest rate. The discount is temporary: borrowers who enroll by September 30, 2026 (or are already enrolled) keep the benefit through June 30, 2028.Already on autopay? You don't need to do anything. Loan servicers will automatically apply the extra 0.75% on top of the existing 0.25% discount.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) announced she will introduce a resolution to impeach Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, accusing her of illegally gutting the Department of Education by shifting more than 100 programs to other federal agencies without congressional approval.The resolution alleges McMahon violated her oath of office, made false and misleading statements to Congress, and broke federal law by transferring the operations of multiple offices to agencies outside the Department — actions Bonamici says only Congress has the power to authorize.

Student loan servicers have started placing automated phone calls to SAVE borrowers, warning them that their loans will reenter repayment when the forbearance ends and that they'll need to pick a new plan or one will be chosen for them.Some borrowers have begun shared transcripts of the messages online. One automated message from Nelnet tells borrowers their "loans will reenter repayment when the SAVE plan ends" and that they "will need to choose a new repayment plan. If you don't choose a plan, one will be assigned for you."The call points borrowers to StudentAid.gov, notes that the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) "becomes available starting July 1st," and reminds those enrolled in auto-debit that payments will pull automatically even if they don't select a plan and default to Standard.

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 >>