As I’ve mentioned in prior threads on PSLF, my son-in-law is a public defender doing PSLF. He is currently stuck in the “SAVE purgatory” mentioned by @kelsmom. He was originally enrolled in the PAYE repayment plan but was encouraged by his loan servicer to switch to SAVE. SAVE only reduced his payment by $90/month and he certainly regrets changing payment plans because he’s stuck now in forbearance due to the SAVE lawsuit. On the one hand he’s not making payments but he’s also not making progress toward his 120. He has credit for 58 out of the needed 120 payments. The Biden administration has supposedly reopened enrollment in PAYE so he’s trying to get back on that plan. He’s too far from the end to count on “buy back,” which is a program that Trump or a future administration could easily eliminate.
He loves his job and is good at it, but there’s no way he could afford to pay back his loans on a standard 10 year repayment plan. Starting PD salaries in his office are 64K with modest seniority increases thereafter. I think almost every lawyer who works there is doing PSLF except those who came from wealthy families and have no law school debt. Same for the Assistant District Attorneys, who make only slightly more. I agree that the system of financing education is badly in need of reform, but I think @bluebayou’s proposal to except all graduate school debt from PSLF is too harsh. Even if you go to in state public universities for both undergrad and law school, as my SIL did (he was also a Pell grant recipient), you end up having to borrow large sums. Average Student Loan Debt For Law School | Bankrate. If you add your law school debt to your undergrad debt, it quickly piles up even for a fully public education.
The PSLF subreddit is also a good source of information. They have some excellent moderators on that forum. There’s a lot of agonizing among those in SAVE purgatory about whether it’s better to stay in SAVE forbearance as long as possible (which means no payments are due for now but also no progress toward PSLF) or take advantage of the opportunity to move back to PAYE or IBR. I haven’t seen many reports of people successfully getting back on PAYE or IBR yet because of the huge backlog of applications.
If your kid is in an MPH program, is it possible she’s in deferment instead of forbearance? See: Federal Student Aid
Assuming she doesn’t want to make payments now, there are different rules about when interest accrues depending on whether she’s in deferment vs SAVE forbearance vs general forbearance vs processing forbearance.
To your point regarding master’s programs as revenue producers.
the university will work to “continue to grow master’s [program] revenue, ultimately doubling the number of residential master’s students and increasing online learners to 2,000 in five years.”
She shouldn’t be accruing interest if she’s in SAVE forbearance. Is she trying to do PSLF? The problem faced by people like my SIL who are stuck in SAVE purgatory while trying to do PSLF is that they only get credit toward their goal of 120 if they make payments under a “qualifying plan.” For months the loan servicers have been unable to process requests to transfer them back into qualifying plans. Hopefully that logjam is finally breaking up but I do worry about what the new administration will do.
She has to be working for a qualifying employer for all 10 years so even though her last 3 years will be a higher income, it is not a private employer with the big bucks. Was there employment for those first years? I thought all money was outgoing as a first and second year?
This may be a way to keep attendings in the public system for a few more years. Or a way to attract them to rural hospitals (not like a lot of them have many choices, but more may put those rural hospitals on their choice list).
I don’t think there should be more restrictions. Make the rules, stick to the rules. Some teachers make a lot more than other teachers but the program doesn’t say a teacher (or fireman or EMT) can only make $$$ and not $$$$$$ to qualify. It doesn’t say they can’t have borrowed $$ but not $$$$ to qualify. Is it always fair? No.
I agree: make the rules, stick to the rules. Remember that PSLF uses “income based repayment” so teachers/doctors/lawyers who make more money have to make a higher monthly payment than those owe earn less. Borrowers have to recertify their income every year based on their tax returns and your monthly payment amount is adjusted accordingly. It’s even possible on some of the repayment plans that if your income goes high enough, you will owe a higher monthly payment than you would under a standard ten year repayment plan.
No, there aren’t other federal loan forgiveness programs.
There is NHSC program, but in order to qualify for this, a med student must have applied for and received a NHSC scholarship before starting med school. The scholarship then pays the tuition only for med school and not in excess of $40K/year. (Nationally the median med school tuition is around $57K/year.) The NHSC program limits a med student’s choice of specialties to only FM, IM, peds or sometimes OB/GYN. And it restricts their employment options to only eligible federally approved health clinic locations. (And even among the approved locations, there are different levels of payback given.)
The NHSC scholarship requires a minimum of 6 years of full time service after residency to payback 4 years of loans. (And that doesn’t include any “excess” loans a NHSC scholarship student may need to take out to cover the balance of their tuition and their living & miscellaneous expenses–like standardized exams fees , health insurance, and transportation costs to their clinical rotation sites which may be hundreds of miles from the med school.)
I think many people are cynical about physicians who gravitate towards well resourced hospitals for some or all of their training, and continue that cynicism towards physicians who end up in private practice in an affluent area.
I do not. I know successful physicians who close up for three weeks at at time and go off to do volunteer work. This isn’t fun stuff either. My long time OB/GYN was on a program for several years running teaching midwives safer birth and post-natal techniques in various parts of the developing world. Delivering babies by candlelight in a shack with no running water- that sort of thing. What he described as appalling conditions-- and yet, he was shoulder to shoulder with the midwives or just the laboring woman’s mother and aunts, teaching while bringing a healthy baby (hopefully) into the world.
My dentist is on a similar program and has helped identify kids with potentially fatal but treatable diseases (yes, just by looking at their teeth and gums) including some hot spots/war zones.
A department chief at a hospital near me who has run vaccine drives in remote Tribal communities, and taught sex education classes in rural areas where most first time mom’s are in HS.
Is this noblesse oblige? Who cares? Does society/humanity gain when highly skilled professionals volunteer their time in this way? Yes. Does the physician that the OP posted about “need” the money that will result from the repayment plan? Who cares? If she follows the rules, then she should qualify. And like many of her colleagues, once she’s established professionally, she will find opportunities to give back.
The nanny/daycare thing? Red Herring. I know many young doctors-- the notion that daycare-- regardless of how inexpensive it might be (and in most cases it’s not) will work for a resident/fellow/attending is laughable. The good centers near me close at 6 pm sharp, close for two weeks in July and the week between Xmas and New years- and this year, don’t reopen until January 6th. So team nanny all the way. Surgical nurses? Same deal. One case runs over by half an hour and the daycare center is calling DCF…
The daycare thing is so true. Doctors routinely work overnight and call shifts. (In hospital call means they are required to be in the hospital for 24 hours straight. Home call means they must wear a pager at home and immediately go the hospital if paged. ) They also work on weekends and holidays.
Residents, fellows and attendings need daycare that is available 24/7/365. That is expensive AND hard to find. Plus doctors don’t get days off to care for sick children who cannot be sent to daycare.
Going in a different direction but I wonder if medical schools charge an arm and a leg knowing that people can do PSLF and still get out after 10 years of work. A second question is whether medicare is paying low remunerations during multi years of training knowing the PSLFs will be written off in the end as a tradeoff.
A couple of thoughts on this. Grad student loans have had a variety of fairly high interest rates. IIR, I knew people paying 7 or 8% grad interest when mortgages were 2-3%. Perhaps if they grad interest rates on a loan you essentially cannot escape/BK/etc. (so less risky than a mortgage) were competitive with mortgage rates, there would not be so much to forgive. If they reran the numbers at the mortgage rates of the day, one might be surprised the new loan amounts to be forgiven.
I also know people on the SAVE program who worked for non-profits which did not qualify for PSLF. One person I know worked in research abroad, an amazing experience, but none of that time (making payments) qualifies.
As, I think Kelsmom, said, sometimes some one will not fit the imagine of the normal recipient, but sometimes, someone who “should” have qualified (in the minds of the average American) will not. Thems the breaks of the game.
Another unlikely qualifier is an emergency room doctor, yep, they work at the hospital, but most/many are not paid by the 501(c)3 hospital. That’s just the way things go.
Here are some stats on PSLF and other forgiveness programs. The vast majority of those who apply for PSLF do not qualify, because the requirements linked above are strict.