Straight Arrow News

According to the report, the scaling back of oversight began last March when the Trump administration laid off 1,300 Department of Education workers, including many from the Federal Student Aid, or FSA, office. That office started 2025 with nearly 1,500 workers but ended the year with just under 800.

“They got rid of all the helpers,” Betsy Mayotte, president of the Institute of Student Loan Advisers, told Straight Arrow News.

The Street

We do. So HR1, which is the budget bill that passed last summer, made probably some of the most significant changes to higher education financing policy that we’ve seen in 10 or 15 years, at least. There are changes, the biggest changes affect how much people can borrow to go to school in the first place.
So especially for graduate students or students attending like medical school or someone, they’ve significantly, so there used to really be no limit to how much you could borrow for federal loans. And now there’s a limit. For graduate students, that limit is gonna be 20,500 a year, no more than 100,000 for that graduate degree.

And for like say a very, so for a very limited amount of what we call professional programs, so your med school, your law school, that they have a slightly increased limit of 50,000 a year, no more than 200,000 total. So that’s one of the really big changes.

TICAS

I’ve tried getting help from my loan servicer but I still have unresolved issues. Where do I go from here?

• Contact The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, which provides free student loan advice from trusted experts.