Income Contingent Repayment Plan Options

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Part 685</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2024-OPE-0135]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1840-AD97</RIN> <SUBJECT>Income Contingent Repayment Plan Options</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Postsecondary Education, Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Interim final rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Education (Department) issues this interim final rule (IFR) to amend the regulations governing income contingent repayment (ICR) plans available to Federal student loan borrowers to make certain that the Department meets its statutory obligation under the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, (HEA) to offer borrowers access to an income contingent repayment plan. The scope of this rule is narrow. It just revises the end date for most borrowers to enroll in ICR or Pay as You Earn plans from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2027. This time-limited change to eligibility restrictions that went into effect on July 1, 2024, will allow the Department to meet its statutory obligations while it undertakes the necessary administrative changes to make its repayment plans that would otherwise be available for borrowers compliant with the terms of an injunction from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (Eighth Circuit). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> These regulations are effective on July 1, 2026. <E T="03">Implementation date:</E> For the implementation date of these regulatory changes, see the <E T="03">Implementation Date of These Regulations</E> section of this document. <E T="03">Comments due date:</E> We must receive your comments on or before December 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> For more information regarding submission of comments, please see <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> . Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> However, if you require an accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your comments via <E T="03">Regulations.gov,</E> please email the Help Desk at <E T="03">regulationshelpdesk@gsa.gov</E> or contact by phone at 866-498-2945. <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Please go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> to submit your comments electronically. Information on using <E T="03">Regulations.gov,</E> including instructions for finding a rule on the site and submitting comments, is available on the site under “FAQ.” A summary of the rule is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/ED-2024-OPE-0135.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For further information contact Tamy Abernathy, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20202. Telephone: (202) 245-4595. Email: <E T="03">NegRegNPRMHelp@ed.gov.</E> If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <E T="03">Implementation Date of These Regulations:</E> These regulations are effective on July 1, 2026. Section 482(c) of the HEA requires that regulations affecting programs under title IV of the HEA be published in final form by November 1, prior to the start of the award year (July 1) to which they apply. However, that section also permits the Secretary to designate any regulation as one that an entity subject to the regulations may choose to implement earlier, as well as the conditions for early implementation. The Secretary is exercising the authority under section 482(c) of the HEA to designate the regulatory changes to 34 CFR part 685 included in this document for early implementation effective on December 16, 2024, for the reasons set forth in the <E T="03">Background</E> and <E T="03">Need for Regulatory Action</E> sections of this document. This date reflects when the Department anticipates being ready to process borrower applications for these plans. <E T="03">Invitation to Comment:</E> We invite you to submit comments regarding this IFR. For your comments to have maximum effect in developing the final regulations, we urge you to clearly identify the specific section of the regulations that each of your comments addresses. The Department will not accept comments submitted after the comment period closes. Please submit your comments only once so that we do not receive duplicate copies. The following tips are meant to help you prepare your comments and provide a basis for the Department to respond to issues raised in your comments in the final regulations: • Be concise but support your claims. • Explain your views as clearly as possible and avoid using profanity. • Refer to specific sections and subsections of the regulations throughout your comments, particularly in any headings that are used to organize your submission. • Explain why you agree or disagree with the regulatory text and support these reasons with data-driven evidence, including the depth and breadth of your personal or professional experiences. • Where you disagree with the regulatory text, suggest alternatives, including regulatory language, and your rationale for the alternative suggestion. • Do not include personally identifiable information (PII) such as Social Security numbers or loan account numbers for yourself or for others in your submission. Should you include any PII in your comment, such information may be posted publicly. • Do not include any information that directly identifies or could identify other individuals or that permits readers to identify other individuals. Your comment may not be posted publicly if it includes PII about other individuals. <E T="03">Privacy Note:</E> The Department's policy is to generally make comments received from members of the public available for public viewing on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, commenters should include in their comments only information about themselves that they wish to make publicly available. Commenters should not include in their comments any information that identifies other individuals or that permits readers to identify other individuals. If, for example, your comment describes an experience of someone other than yourself, please do not identify that individual or include information that would allow readers to identify that individual. The Department may not make comments that contain personally identifiable information (PII) about someone other than the commenter publicly available on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> for privacy reasons. This may include comments where the commenter refers to a third-party individual without using their name if the Department determines that the comment provides enough detail that could allow one or more readers to link the information to the third-party individual. If your comment refers to a third-party individual, please refer to the third-party individual anonymously to reduce the chance that information in your comment could be linked to the third party. For example, “a former student with a graduate level degree” does not provide information that identifies a third-party individual, as opposed to “my sister, Jane Doe, had this experience while attending University X,” which does provide enough information to identify a specific third-party individual. For privacy reasons, the Department reserves the right to not make available on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> any information in comments that identifies other individuals, includes information that would allow readers to identify other individuals, or includes threats of harm to another person or to oneself. <E T="03">Mass Writing Campaigns:</E> In instances where individual submissions appear to be duplicates or near duplicates of comments prepared as part of a writing campaign, the Department will post one representative sample comment along with the total comment count for that campaign to <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> The Department will consider these comments along with all other comments received. In instances where individual submissions are bundled together (submitted as a single document or packaged together), the Department will post all the substantive comments included in the submissions along with the total comment count for that document or package to <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> A well-supported comment is often more informative to the agency than multiple form letters. <E T="03">Public Comments:</E> The Department invites you to submit comments on all aspects of this IFR, specifically the regulatory provisions in § 685.209(c)(4) and (5), the <E T="03">Regulatory Impact Analysis,</E> and the <E T="03">Paperwork Reduction Act</E> sections. The Department may, at its discretion, decide not to post or to withdraw certain comments and other materials that are computer-generated. Comments containing the promotion of commercial services or products, and spam will be removed. We may not address comments outside of the scope of this IFR. Generally, comments that are outside of the scope of this IFR are comments that do not discuss the content or impact of the rule or the Department's evidence or reasons for this IFR. For instance, the Department is not changing the terms of the Income Based Repayment (IBR) plan, so we would not respond to a comment exclusively about the terms of IBR because it is outside the scope of these regulations. Comments that are submitted after the comment period closes will not be posted to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> or addressed in the IFR. Comments containing personal threats will not be posted to <E T="03">Regulations.g ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 68k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━