Here's what Washingtonians need to know about new federal student loan policies 24%
By Noel Gasca0%
7/1/2026, 4:20:16 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Loss Aversion, and Hasty Generalization, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 21.5% saturation with 152 hits. Analysis detected 1,177 faulty-reasoning hits from 707 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 36.6% and a BS Rank of 24% (16,773 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 76.60% of the article peer group.
If you're among the more than 800,000 Washingtonians estimated to be living with student loan debt, you may be subject to new repayment policies that went active on July 1.
And those changes could mean you'll have to start paying more.
The Saving on a Valuable Education Plan — better known as SAVE — was launched by the Biden administration in 2023.
It aimed to decrease monthly payments for lower-income borrowers.
Some paid zero dollars per month.
But as of July 1, SAVE is dead, following a lengthy legal battle that stretched all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court.
RELATED: Federal money for workforce training begins, but few programs qualify
Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director for Protect Borrowers, a D.C.-based nonprofit, said people who enrolled in SAVE now have 90 days to pick a new income-driven repayment plan.
"If you miss this window, this 90 days to select a plan that's maybe not good but the best for you, you'll be forcibly placed on a more expensive plan," Berkman-Breen said.
The Department of Education has told borrowers that if they don't select a plan on their own, they'll be automatically enrolled into either the Standard Repayment Plan, or a new repayment option: the Tiered Standard Plan.
Monthly payments for the Standard Repayment Plan are not based on your income.
Instead, payments are a fixed amount set to make sure loans are paid off within 10 years.
The Tiered Standard Plan is a new option from the Trump administration.
Borrowers pay back their loans at a fixed amount, but the timeline for repayment can stretch from 10 to 25 years, depending on the amount you've borrowed.
Borrowers can still enroll in an Income-Driven Repayment Plan if they were enrolled in SAVE.
Berkmann-Breen says even after the 90-day window to pick a new plan has closed, borrowers can still apply for a new income-based plan.
"But there's gonna be a couple months there where maybe you're panicking [because] you're getting a $1,000 bill that you can't afford, and you have to file some paperwork to try to correct for that," Berkmann-Breen said.
The best way for borrowers to figure out which repayment plan works best for them, Berkmann-Breen suggests, is to use the federal student loan repayment calculator, or check out online repayment resources from the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program.
Going back to school?
Another change to student loans graduate and professional degree borrowers will now have to consider are new borrowing caps.
As part of President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Grad PLUS loan program is ending.
The plan allowed graduate students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance with no aggregate or lifetime limit.
Now, students enrolling in graduate programs after July 1, 2026 will have an annual borrowing limit of $20,500.
That limit goes up to $50,000 if a student is pursuing a degree in programs like law, dentistry, or medicine.
These programs typically cost far more.
The total cost of attendance for one year of medical school at the University of Washington for an in-state student during the 2025-26 academic year totaled roughly $98,000.
RELATED: Will the new student loan limits actually drive down tuition?
Economists weigh in
The Trump administration has argued that the caps on federal student loans will force universities to lower the cost of graduate programs.
If tuition costs are lowered, schools will see an uptick in enrollment.
But Berkmann-Breen predicts a different outcome.
"I think in general we'll see a drop in enrollment because it'll be just to expensive for people, or it'll be too risky because they don't wanna borrow as much from the private loan market," Berkmann-Breen said.
Students that are able to enroll, may ultimately pick different fields of study, or end up practicing their field of study differently as well.
"Instead of going to practice rural healthcare or family medicine, we might see more doctors graduating, or nurse practitioners graduating, and saying 'I need to go make as much money as I can because I have a crazy amount of student loan debt,'" Berkmann-Breen said.
To see a complete list of the changes to federal student loans, visit studentaid.gov
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