GBH Daily: School debt confusion

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Today we have a deeper look into federal student loan repayment plans — and an organization with ideas on how we might do things differently. But first: a new cap for how long international students can stay in the U.S. before they have to reapply for a visa takes effect this week, even for longer graduate programs.

Colleges told GBH’s Kirk Carapezza they’re already feeling the effects of that cap on campus, and worry it could discourage talented international students from applying to U.S. universities in the first place. And they are starting to see some numbers that back that up.

International applications to U.S. colleges fell 10% in the most recent admissions cycle. Nine of the ten countries that send the most international applicants saw declines.

The Association of International Educators predicts that the number of international students enrolling in American colleges and graduate programs will decrease by 10% this fall, meaning American economies will see $3.4 billion less spending and lose almost 40,000 jobs.

“It’s literally saying to the schools, ‘We know better, and we’re going to tell you what we think is a normal length of study’ — something that is unprecedented because you have government folks who really know nothing about what happens on a day-to-day basis,” The association’s CEO, Fanta Aw, told Carapezza. You can read Carapezza’s full story about this visa program here.

Four Things to Know

1. Both of the state senate candidates endorsed by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu as challengers to incumbents lost their primaries. The race between State Sen. Will Brownsberger and former Wu aide Daniel Lander came down to 35 votes in a recount, with Brownsberger coming out ahead.

GBH’s Adam Reilly has a look here at how Wu discussed that race and the race between Sen. Nick Collins of South Boston and Latoya Gayle, which Collins won with 54% of the vote.

2. Republican gubernatorial nominee Mike Minogue effectively launched his campaign against incumbent Gov. Maura Healey last week after winning his party’s primary. He said his campaign follows the acronym AAOK, which stands for “accountability, affordability, opportunity and keeping communities safe.”

“On affordability, [Massachusetts is] one of the most expensive places to live, from all the taxes we have to our energy costs to our gas taxes,” he said. “We need to lower that so people can afford to live here.”

3. Unionized workers of the Barnstable County Sheriff Office voted no confidence in Sheriff Donna Buckley, saying the department’s budget has grown by about $10 million and that they’re seeing “deteriorating facility conditions, unsafe working conditions and a hostile work environment under new Superintendent Ned McCormick.”

Buckley said a lot of that money went to pay raises for workers in the sheriff’s office. “If they want to give back the raises, that’s up to them,” she said. “We needed to be able to recruit and retain staff and when we looked around and saw what other counties were paying we weren’t even in the ballpark. It’s a pretty drastic situation that required a drastic response, and it was all for their benefit.”

4. The workers who help with wheelchairs and handle baggage at Logan Airport are asking Massport, the agency that runs the airport, to mandate better health insurance coverage across all the companies that do work there.

“I urge you to adopt a standard that ensures all airport workers feel protected — just as we strive to ensure that passengers feel safe when they take their seats,” said Juan Baez, who cleans aircraft cabins after planes land at Logan.

More changes to student loans: What does losing the SAVE plan mean for current borrowers?

Back to school season means more people are thinking about student loans. Federal loans have always been somewhat confusing, with a series of acronyms and parameters students and their families have to navigate in order to pay for an education.

So let’s break it down: the Biden-era Saving on a Valuable Education Plan (acronymically known as SAVE) is no more. The Trump administration has created a program they call Repayment Assistance Plan, or RAP. The federal Department of Education is urging borrowers to enroll in that plan, which caps interest but also extends the amount of time borrowers will pay off the loans — from between 20 and 25 years to 30 years.

“If it feels chaotic, it’s because it has been chaotic,” Dr. Jalil Bishop, co-founder of a nonprofit called the Equity Research Cooperative, told Paris Alston on GBH News Rooted. “It’s ok to be confused. In fact, you probably should be confused, because every two years we’re seeing rapid changes to the student loans system, what type of income-based repayment plans you even qualify for. We’ve seen some of those changes struck down by courts, then brought back, and then struck down again. We have new plans unfolding under the new Trump administration.”

Bishop’s organization is part of a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from automatically moving people from SAVE plans to RAP plans. He said he’d like to see the country take a different path on how we pay for education.

“Higher ed was mainly a grant-financed system until the 1980s,” he said. “It’s not really about coming up with new money. We finance a higher ed system with student loan debt that is never really repaid, and then we spend billions of dollars trying to collect on that student loan debt from people who really don’t have the money. So when you really add all of that up, a lot of it is just reallocating those funds away from debt collection agencies and loan servicers and towards a free college program.”

You can watch the full conversation on GBH News Rooted here. 

Dig deeper: 

-A state agency that issues student loans has sued thousands of borrowers

-Will new federal student loan caps make grad school more affordable or less attainable?

-Other countries show student loans can be ‘simple’ and ‘humane’