President Donald Trump signs executive orders relating to higher education institutions, alongside Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, right, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, April 23, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
More than half a million federal student loan borrowers remain in a backlog of applications to access an affordable repayment plan, according to a new court filing.
The Trump administration reported on Monday that 576,609 borrowers’ requests for an income-driven repayment plan were still pending as of the end of February.
Many student loan borrowers rely on IDR plans to be able to afford their monthly bills. The plans limit monthly payments to a share of discretionary income and cancel any remaining debt after a certain period, typically 20 or 25 years.
The U.S. Department of Education also did not forgive any student loan borrowers’ debts under an IDR plan during the month of February, Trump officials reported.
Another 88,170 federal student loan borrowers are waiting for an answer on their Public Service Loan Forgiveness buyback application, the court filing showed.
Signed into law in 2007 by President George W. Bush, PSLF offers debt cancellation to not-for-profit and government workers after a decade. The buyback option, introduced by the Biden administration, allows borrowers pursuing PSLF to retroactively pay for any months they missed because of a forbearance or deferment, accelerating their timeline to forgiveness.
The U.S. Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.
Over 42 million Americans hold student loans, and the outstanding debt exceeds $1.6 trillion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
How application backlog has changed
The Education Department has made progress on processing IDR applications: More than 626,000 requests were pending in January, compared with nearly 1.4 million in July.
However, the PSLF buyback pileup continues to grow. More than 86,520 borrowers were in the queue in January, up from 83,370 in December and 80,210 in November.
“At the current rate, if there were no more forms submitted, it would take them nearly three years to clear the backlog,” Kantrowitz said.
Carolina Rodriguez, director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program in New York, said the backlog for relief programs could worsen as borrowers in the now-defunct Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan submit applications to access a new repayment plan.
More than 7 million student loan borrowers remain in a Biden administration-era forbearance, after lawsuits stopped the SAVE plan, according to the Education Department.
The Trump administration has allowed borrowers to remain in the forbearance for now, but it resumed charging interest over the summer and is expected to end the payment pause likely this spring.
“In the coming weeks, the Department will issue clear guidance on next steps for borrowers enrolled in the illegal SAVE Plan, including details regarding how borrowers can move into a legal repayment plan,” Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in a statement to CNBC earlier this month, after a federal appeals court ordered an end to the SAVE plan.
Borrowers blocked from relief amid high default rates
The wait to access relief programs comes at an especially difficult time for student loan borrowers, experts say. Around 9 million borrowers were in default as of Dec. 2025, according to an analysis of government data by higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
About 42% of federal student loan borrowers say their monthly payments make it harder to cover basic needs such as food and housing, according to a recent survey by The Institute for College Access & Success and Data for Progress.
The Biden administration introduced initiatives to provide borrowers with loan forgiveness and lower bills, only to have those measures blocked by Republican-led legal challenges. President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will soon eliminate several affordable repayment plans and other relief options.
