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More than 43 million student loan borrowers rang in 2023 full of hope that their debt balances would drop by either $10,000 or $20,000 under President Joe Biden’s forgiveness plan. But that promised relief never materialized after the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s plan in June, leaving borrowers in limbo until student loan payments resumed in the fall following a three-year pandemic pause. As the calendar gets ready to flip to 2024, borrowers along with student loan and consumer protection advocates are growing frustrated with the Biden administration, which is now eyeing other ways to provide relief. 

Four in 10 student loan borrowers missed their first monthly payment since the pandemic-era pause lifted this fall, according to new federal data. Roughly 60% of the 22 million people whose bills came due in October for the first time in more than three years paid them, the Education Department said Friday. That’s a drop from 70% of borrowers who made their payments for the same period in October 2019, before the pandemic, according to the Education Department. 
 

Major college donors used to expect their name on a building or the ability to call in a favor with the admissions office. They often gave money toward the end of their life, as a bookend to a successful career. And if they wanted to sway school policy, they typically worked behind the scenes to get their way. The turmoil at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, however, illustrates a new playbook for how the wealthiest Americans are exerting influence in higher education.

The Education Department announced investigations into six more colleges and universities on Tuesday, adding to a growing list of institutions that the agency is examining over complaints of campus discrimination.
The schools named by the department were Stanford, the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of California-San Diego, the University of Washington-Seattle, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Whitman College in Washington State.
 

After three months of negotiations, a panel of higher education experts could not agree on key elements of the Biden administration’s latest student loan forgiveness plan. The group, convened by the Education Department, has been hammering out a regulation to replace the debt relief program the Supreme Court struck down earlier this year. Student advocates and borrowers on the committee have pressed for a plan as far-reaching as Biden’s initial bid to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for about 40 million people. But the administration is opting for a narrower approach, placing it at odds with some negotiators.