I recently completed my Masters and would like to continue on for my Doctorate in Education.  I’m worried about the future of PSLF.  Should I apply now and get into the system?  I’d rather try to play it safe and get into the system and hopefully be grandfathered than continue my education and have the program eliminated while I’m completing the Doctorate.  What advice do you have?

I would apply now. We have no idea what the Trump Administration is going to do. We can assume our current congress and Department of Education do not have student loan relief as a top priority. I believe it might be possible to consolidate a new loan later under the program. Again, I’d put finances before more education and debt.

Well, you can’t really apply to anything at the current moment. There is no way to officially apply for PSLF until you’ve made your 120 payments. All you can do is fill out an employee certification form for your existing loans, and I guess that might get these loans “in the system” so to speak, but I’m not sure if you need at least 1 payment, and only your older loans would be “in the system”, meaning any new loans would not be on the clock unless you enter repayment for each of them as they occur, and it can get difficult to manage. You’d have to give up your in-school deferments for the existing loans and may have to wait for the grace period to expire (I don’t know, maybe you can ask that to be waived, but for some reason I thought it couldn’t be). Also, you’d have to be in repayment status for your loans while you are in school, and that might be difficult to manage if you waived your deferments (unless you can get an IBR rate of $0). It’s worth a shot, but might cause a lot of confusion because you haven’t fully graduated yet. I would suspect any changes to the program would only apply to loans dispersed after a certain date, and not by who is “in the system”, but I could be wrong….