Millions of Americans are trying to navigate the federal student loan system after the Trump administration spent the past few months overhauling it.
That includes Morgan Woodin, 30, who lives in Kent and works at the city’s namesake public university. He’s one of the estimated 1.8 million federal student loan borrowers living in Ohio who otherwise likely could not have paid for college without the government’s help.
Woodin, who graduated years ago and is now paying back his loans, said keeping up with recent updates has been a “whirlwind.”
“It’s just been change after change after change,” he said.
Many of the biggest developments are rooted in the administration’s recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill,” impacting both outstanding borrowers such as Woodin and those who will take out federal loans in the future.
Woodin said he hasn’t received much information about updates or next steps directly from the companies that manage his loan. Instead, most of the answers he’s found come from news articles and a Facebook group for those pursuing a federal loan forgiveness plan available for public workers.
“I’m out of control here, which is a good and a bad thing, depending on how you look at it,” said Woodin.
Trump administration leaders said all of these changes help simplify a complicated system, save taxpayers money, and hold colleges more accountable.
But one of critics’ biggest concerns is that monthly payments will increase for most borrowers under new repayment plans, ultimately making it harder for low-income people to access higher education.
How changes impact current student loan borrowers
Nearly half of Ohio borrowers are under age 35, with one estimate saying they owe about $35,075 in federal loans, on average
Woodin said he owes more than that: About $50,000 from earning an undergraduate degree and an MBA from a state school in Pennsylvania, where he grew up.
It’s been a minute since he – and many other Americans – have made federal student loan payments. That’s because the timelines have been complicated.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began during President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration put these loans into forbearance, meaning interest stopped accruing on loan balances and borrowers weren’t required to make payments. That pause lasted for 41 months until then-President Joe Biden’s administration lifted it in October 2023.
Around that same time, the Biden administration introduced the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan, which they said would make borrowers’ monthly payments more affordable. The plan quickly faced legal challenges. As a result, borrowers were automatically put on another interest-free payment pause and again didn’t have to make payments.
The nearly 8 million Americans enrolled in that plan, including Woodin, were then essentially stuck in limbo.
Woodin said he remained eager to pay his debt. He’s pursuing a federal loan forgiveness program earmarked for public service workers. Eligibility requirements mean he needs to make 120 separate monthly payments over a minimum of 10 years while working in a public job. Any payments made during a forbearance period don’t count towards that magic 120 number.
Plus, Woodin said, he wanted to make good on the loans “that I took out, under the terms that I agreed to and understood – as much as an 18-year-old can.”
“I want to make my payments and just do my time and be done with these loans,” he said.
A 607% payment increase
Woodin said he applied to get out of that SAVE plan and into a different repayment plan as soon as the option was offered earlier this year.
Soon, though, the U.S. Department of Education paused reviewing those applications. The department currently has a backlog of about 27,000 complaints related to student loans, NBC News reported earlier this month.
The option to switch reopened this summer, and again, Woodin said he applied. All borrowers enrolled in SAVE must do the same, as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” effectively ended the plan, telling borrowers they need to get out of it by 2028. Interest on any loans for those still enrolled began accruing again this month.
Woodin said his new application was approved within about a week. His new repayment plan, tied to his current income, is set to be $191 each month beginning in September – a 607% increase from the $27 monthly payment he said he last made years ago before all of the forbearances began.
The increase is, at least in part, tied to Woodin’s income. He’s enrolled in an income-based repayment plan that needs to be recertified each year and use specific calculations to dictate what people pay. Critics say the formula behind the Trump administration’s newest repayment plan will make enrolled borrowers’ payments spike “if their income increases even slightly.”
This is why Woodin said he once told his boss he’s “apprehensive” about potential promotion opportunities. When he’d get a 2% to 3% annual raise, he said, his loan repayments would tick up by that same amount.
“Even when I’m talking about moving up the career ladder, it all comes back to ‘Will my student loans go up, and will I be able to pinch pennies and make it work?’” he said.
Still, Woodin said he feels lucky. He recently paid off his “dream car,” a Honda CR-V he said he picked, in part, because “they’re so reliable, they last forever.” That car payment basically equates to his new loan payment in his monthly budget, he said. One in, one out.
Luckiness doesn’t mean there aren’t lingering worries, though. He thinks he’ll hit the eligibility requirements for the public service forgiveness program by 2028 and plans to apply then – if the program’s still around, he said.
Though the Trump administration is also making changes to the public service forgiveness program, totally getting rid of it would require Congressional approval.
How student loan changes impact future borrowers
Trying to stay up to date on the influx of student loan information “is always a challenge,” said James Cosby, executive director of Bottom Line Ohio. The Dayton nonprofit helps low-income and/or first-generation students get to college.
It’s an especially big undertaking right now. Cosby pointed to another change from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that now will limit how much money students can borrow for graduate school.
“What that really means is the folks who could afford it, their lives haven’t changed at all,” he said. “For folks who weren’t born into a situation where they could afford to not take out loans to take advantage of these opportunities, that door closes to them.”
Cosby’s group encourages the high school students they work with to take out as little as possible in student loans to pay for college. During those conversations, he said he has noted young people seem to be interested in pursuing the most lucrative degree in the least amount of time.
“They see how hard their parents work and they want to give back as soon as they can,” he said. “They don’t want to waste the opportunity.”
Cosby said the group’s students hear the “horror stories” about student loan debt but still want to go to college because a “degree can change their lives.”
Only about 42% of Americans say they have “a great deal” of confidence in higher ed, per a July Gallup survey, though that is six percentage points higher than two years ago. Federal data shows people with an associate or bachelor’s degree have higher median earnings than those with a high school diploma.
“For me, that was very eye opening because the perception is ‘Nobody wants to go to college, nobody cares, nobody values education,’’’ said Cosby. “Actually, a lot of our students still really do, and so do their families.”