May 20, 2025 — The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) offered a student debt webinar May 8 to connect listeners to information from industry experts about how to navigate the student loan system and fight for affordable repayment plans and access to Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). 

“For more than a decade, AFT has been fighting to fix the broken student debt system and stop loan servicers from preying on our members,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said. “This is union work, and the AFT will not stop until every public employee has access to affordable payment plans that count toward PSLF and all young people have affordable paths to opportunity.” 

In the wake of the Trump administration and loan servicer giant MOHELA running roughshod over those with student debt, removing avenues to affordable repayment plans and taking information down from the Studentaid.gov website, AFT filed lawsuits and went to court to fight back. 

Providing even less information than before, the administration is now threatening to start garnishing wages, Social Security, and tax returns, and sending delinquent and defaulted loans to collections. The fallout is destroying borrowers’ financial stability and credit scores. 

Mike Pierce, the head of the Student Loan Protection Center, has been working with AFT on student debts issues for years. 

“We’ve been in this fight for a long time together, going back to AFT’s lawsuit against Navient and the incredible work that we’ve done to try to make the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program actually work,” he said. “More than a million public service workers are now debt-free because President Biden listened to AFT and listened to other unions who represent public service workers and made trying to make PSLF actually work a priority.”  

Americans owe more than $1.7 trillion in student loans – more than all the outstanding car loans, credit card debt, and medical debt.  

“It’s a huge market, Pierce said. “Anybody that has tried to get a straight answer out of MOHELA knows these companies are paid billions of dollars by the federal government, often cutting corners, misleading borrowers, and generally making an already complicated and broken system worse. It’s a huge problem for families that have these student loans.” 

The pause on debt collection and repayment during the COVID-19 pandemic lasted about five and a half years, Pierce said. Now that it is over, people are going to have to start navigating the convoluted system and figuring out how to make ends meet with new monthly payments. 

“We are now starting to see one of the largest negative credit events in the history of the credit reporting system,” Pierce said. “Millions of peoples’ credit is being damaged in real time right now for the first time since the pandemic. We expect by the end of this month, just shy of six million people will have their credit damaged as they turn the student loan system back on.” 

By the end of the year, the estimates are 8 to 10 million. 

“Those are people that maybe aren’t getting bills, weren’t current on their loans, or just weren’t making heads or tails on what’s going on and they won’t discover that things are bad until they get an alert from their FICO monitor or credit reporting company,” he said. 

Things you can do to protect yourself 

Right now, the best thing you can do if presented with a letter that the government is going to pursue collections, is contact your member of Congress. 

“It doesn’t matter where you live, every member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, has a casework operation and is there to help you, be your advocate with the federal government when there’s a broken public program,” Pierce said. “There is no more broken public program that the student loan. Normally we would tell you to go to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or the Department of Education, but right now this is better.” 

Borrowers should take action now to protect themselves from credit damage and get out of defaults. AFT advises the following: 

1. 1. Enroll in an income-driven repayment plan that qualifies for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. These include Pay as You Earn and Income-Based Repayment. Borrowers currently enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education Plan should immediately switch their repayment plan to Pay as You Earn or Income-Based. You can nroll in or change your current income-driven repayment plan, here. 
   2. Certify all previous public service employment. Complete an application once a year to update your payment count using this Help Tool. Complete the application one final time after you make your 120th payment. 
   3. Keep good records of payment counts and correspondence with servicers. If your servicer gave you incorrect information, email repayment_support@ed.gov and file a complaint with the ombudsman here. 

AFT will hold more Student Debt Clinic virtual webinars at 7 p.m. on May 27 and June 5, with more to be announced. Register here. Additional resources are available here. 

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