Student Loan Visual Trackers Should Be Restored (opinion)

Since the end of the student loan payment pause, navigating repayment for borrowers in income-driven repayment (IDR) plans has been exceptionally difficult. About 13 million borrowers—roughly 39 percent of those serviced by the Department of Education—are enrolled in IDR plans.

These borrowers confront a policy landscape marked by uncertainty and change. In 2023, the Biden administration rolled out the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan by automatically enrolling borrowers who were participating in the Revised Pay as You Earn (REPAYE) plan and encouraging borrowers from other IDR plans to enroll in SAVE. But in July 2024, a court halted implementation of the SAVE program and the Biden administration effectively stopped communicating with these borrowers. Moreover, a federal appellate court ruling raised the question of whether forgiveness under the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and former REPAYE programs may be illegal, throwing extreme amounts of uncertainty into millions of borrowers’ lives.

Compounding uncertainty, a recent proposed settlement between the Trump administration and the state of Missouri would effectively end the SAVE program. However, borrowers cannot simply return to REPAYE and must apply to temporarily go to PAYE, as Congress has phased these programs out while creating another IDR plan called the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), which will launch this coming July. Unfortunately for current borrowers, the RAP plan is less generous, as monthly payments will likely be higher and forgiveness is delayed to 30 years instead of 20 to 25 years.

Borrowers who must transition from SAVE could have to wait more than 25 months as millions of applications must be processed by ED, which has intentionally been hobbled. This layering of disruption compounds uncertainty on top of long-standing operational failings: Even when fully staffed, ED has a documented history of miscounting qualifying payments and other IDR tracking errors, mistakes that have already delayed forgiveness for borrowers who should have qualified.

Since the SAVE stay, government guidance to servicers has also been inconsistent. At the same time, servicers such as the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri have been accused of and sued for practices including mishandling forgiveness applications and deflecting borrower calls—adding yet another layer of uncertainty for borrowers navigating an increasingly complex and quickly changing system.

However, one low-cost, high-impact tool briefly offered a measure of relief: visual progress trackers. Implemented by the Biden administration in January 2025, these trackers increased transparency by displaying borrowers’ IDR qualifying payment counts and estimated time to forgiveness. Before implementation, my work presented to the Office of Federal Student Aid and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau documented strong demand for these low‑cost, transparent tools, and the trackers represented a rare, direct response to borrowers’ needs.

Unfortunately, the trackers were removed in April 2025 by the Trump administration. Despite earlier assurances from the secretary of education that they would be reinstated, there appears to be no plan to restore them —another clear sign that this administration has been an unreliable partner for higher education. When the government removes these tools, it allows the system to operate with less scrutiny and leaves borrowers with less clarity—an outcome that appears deliberate.

Visual trackers do more than improve transparency and accountability— they reduce borrowers’ distress and uncertainty. In surveys and in‑depth interviews, borrowers consistently describe how opaque rules, shifting plans and unclear progress toward forgiveness produce chronic financial and psychological strain. The stakes are high. In my survey work, roughly 19 percent of borrowers reported suicidal ideation, nearly four times the national adult rate of 5.3 percent—underscoring how financial distress and repayment uncertainty becomes a public health issue.

Most IDR borrowers also faced negative amortization, so balances would grow over 10 to 25 years and the pressure compounds rather than eases. By contrast, as borrowers near forgiveness, their distress typically falls. Credible, predictable, time‑bound milestones represented on visual trackers are likely to meaningfully reduce financial and psychological strain and help people navigate a confusing, often changing system.

Simply stated: Removing the trackers was not only an administrative choice to obfuscate oversight—it also likely heightened borrower uncertainty and eliminated a source of psychological relief, which has a wide range of individualized and societal spillover effects.

Restoring the trackers requires urgent, nonpartisan action: It is an evidence‑based, low‑cost and low-touch step to restore transparency, hold the government and loan servicers accountable, and reduce borrower uncertainty, which has become a public health concern. Trackers provide predictable milestones, ease financial and psychological strain, and create a clear audit trail borrowers can use to verify their progress and trust the system.

Reinstating trackers would immediately reduce anxiety for millions, improve borrower decision‑making and restore a simple, effective mechanism for transparency and accountability that tangibly improves well‑being. Removing the visual trackers and refusing to reinstate them is simply indefensible: It corrodes public trust and amounts to willful neglect of borrowers’ financial and mental well‑being.