More than half a million federal student loan borrowers are waiting in a growing backlog to access affordable repayment plans, even as the federal government has quietly scaled back the oversight mechanisms designed to protect them throughout the process.
A court filing submitted by the Trump administration this week revealed that 576,609 borrowers had pending requests for income-driven repayment plans as of late February — plans that cap monthly payments based on discretionary income and cancel remaining balances after 20 or 25 years. An additional 88,170 borrowers are awaiting decisions on Public Service Loan Forgiveness buyback applications, a program that allows nonprofit and government workers to retroactively credit months lost to forbearance or deferment toward their forgiveness timeline.
The IDR backlog has narrowed from roughly 1.4 million pending applications last July, but the PSLF buyback queue has been moving in the opposite direction, growing steadily from around 80,000 in November to its current level. Higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz noted in an analysis that “at the current rate, if there were no more forms submitted, it would take them nearly three years to clear the backlog.”
The administration also reported that no borrower debts were forgiven under any IDR plan during February.
Adding urgency to the backlog problem is the situation facing the approximately 7 million borrowers currently enrolled in the Biden-era SAVE plan, which federal courts have struck down as unlawful. Those borrowers remain in a payment forbearance for now, but interest resumed accruing last summer, and the pause is expected to end this spring. When it does, millions will need to apply for alternative repayment plans — feeding directly into a system already struggling to keep pace.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Government Accountability Office has raised concerns about the infrastructure borrowers will rely on when they do. The GAO found that the Office of Federal Student Aid halted two key oversight functions for private loan servicers in February 2025: accuracy reviews, which compared borrower data between servicer systems and federal records, and call quality reviews, which assessed whether servicers were giving borrowers correct information. Neither has resumed.
The suspension was attributed to staffing shortfalls stemming from workforce reductions at the Education Department. FSA began 2025 with roughly 1,400 employees; by December, that figure had dropped to 777.
The timing is particularly concerning given that four of the five federally contracted servicers — Aidvantage, CRI, EdFinancial, MOHELA, and Nelnet — had already failed accuracy performance standards in the final quarters before oversight was suspended, collectively incurring around $850,000 in financial penalties. The department’s own independent auditor separately flagged a “material weakness related to the reliability of its student loan data” as recently as January of this year.
The Department of Education has pushed back on the GAO’s recommendation to resume the reviews, arguing that alternative monitoring methods, including servicer satisfaction surveys and executive-level check-in meetings, are sufficient. The GAO disagreed.
The broader stakes are significant. More than 42 million Americans carry federal student loans totaling over $1.6 trillion in outstanding debt. Around 9 million borrowers were in default as of December 2025. A recent survey found that roughly 42% of federal borrowers say their monthly payments make it harder to afford basic needs like food and housing.
Beginning in July 2026, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is set to introduce a new repayment structure while phasing out several existing plans, requiring millions of additional borrowers to navigate a system that, for now, is operating without some of its most basic quality controls.
