“Student loan borrowers exiting SAVE may face sharply higher payments if they don’t take action soon”

What actually happened

The Trump administration's Education Department is winding down the Biden-era SAVE income-driven repayment plan after it was struck down in court, giving enrollees a 90-day window per servicer notice to pick a new plan before being defaulted into Standard or Tiered Standard repayment. Borrowers who miss their window face fixed payments instead of SAVE's income-based 5% formula, which can sharply raise monthly bills for some.

Key facts

• The earliest date borrowers must exit the program is Sept. 29, according to a Department of Education court filing, though the department noted that most borrowers will receive additional time.
• Corroborated independently: notices go out in waves through the end of 2026, which puts the last individual deadline around March 31, 2027.
• More than 6.9 million borrowers were still in SAVE as of March, with an average debt of close to $55,000, according to an analysis by higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
• Borrowers have been slow to leave the plan: around 7.7 million were in the program in July 2025.
• Kantrowitz on record: "Payments for some borrowers could double or triple."
• The Department's own next-steps announcement confirms the mechanism: borrowers currently enrolled in the illegal SAVE Plan will be given at least 90 days to enter a legal repayment plan of their choice, including the new Repayment Assistance Plan.
• Forbes' independent reporting matches CNBC's default-to-standard warning: if they don't act within that timeframe, the notice warns, their student loans will be placed in a Standard plan.
• The article's own worked example (Summer analysis) shows the range isn't universal doom: a $60,000-debt household drops from $690/month under Standard to $158/month under the new RAP plan, meaning the "sharply higher" outcome is conditional on which alternative plan a borrower picks, not automatic once off SAVE.

What to watch for

• Watch whether the Department's 530,000-application IDR backlog clears before borrowers' 90-day clocks expire, since a processing delay could push people into the default Standard plan through no fault of their own.
• Track how many of the 6.9 million remaining SAVE borrowers actually switch to RAP versus getting defaulted, since that ratio determines whether "sharply higher payments" becomes the median outcome or a tail risk.