For Student Borrowers, Time to Start Repaying Loans<br />“Certainly there are reasons to be cautious,” said Adam Minsky, a lawyer specializing<br />in student loans, “but the program is still very much in existence.”<br />Ms. Cheng advises borrowers to submit a certification form, provided by the Department of Education, to document<br />that they are employed at a qualified job and that their payments are being properly credited, so that they remain on track to have their debt forgiven.<br />Spring graduates typically get notices from a loan servicer — the company<br />that processes payments and manages a student’s loans — the following November, with payments beginning in December.<br />If you don’t know who your servicer is, you can check the National Student Loan Data System<br />to find out which company handles the loans you borrowed from the federal government.<br />Or you can contact the financial aid office at your alma mater, said Persis Yu, director<br />of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center.<br />If you have not received any sort of notice by now, it is best to contact your loan servicer, said Diane Cheng,<br />associate research director at the Institute for College Access and Success, a nonprofit organization.<br />The average debt per borrower in 2016 ranged from a low of $20,000 in Utah to more<br />than $36,000 in New Hampshire, according to the nonprofit Project on Student Debt.
