The last five years have been a whirlwind for student loan policy. There was a pandemic-era payment pause that lasted more than three years. Some student debt was cancelled, and then that cancellation was … cancelled. Now, any borrowers enrolled in SAVE, which stands for Saving on a Valuable Education and is a Biden-era loan repayment plan that’s ending, are receiving notices that they have to enroll in a new plan. All these changes have some borrowers feeling whiplashed. One of them is Melissa Dezendorf. She’s based in New Mexico, where she works as a veterinarian — a dream she’s had since she was four years old. “I love animals, I love science, I love the curiosity factor in medicine,” Dezendorf said. “There's always something new to learn.”She took out loans to cover tuition and living expenses for vet school and graduated from a public university in Louisiana in 2019. Her total debt was $208,000. “I was grateful for the ability to finance an education that I would not have been able to obtain otherwise,” Dezendorf said. She budgeted for her monthly student loan payments and took advantage of the pandemic-era payment pause. Then, in 2023, the Biden administration announced the SAVE plan, which it billed as “the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever.” Monthly payments were based on a borrower’s income, and could be as low as $0.“I jumped on it. I said, ‘This is great. It's going to be a payment that I can afford,’” she said. “‘I'm going to be able to pay off that which I owe.’”Dezendorf is one of 6 million people enrolled in the SAVE program. She paid about $800 a month under it, though she has stopped making payments while it’s been in legal limbo. SAVE was blocked by a federal appeals court last February. Then, last summer, Congress passed a law to phase the program out by 2028, and earlier this year, the Trump administration reached a settlement ending SAVE early. This change in policy has made Dezendorf furious.“I signed up in good faith, trusting that the government would not pull the rug out from under me, and when they did, it was a pretty big blow,” she said.Lots of borrowers are feeling that blow, and some believe there’s still a way out. The Trump administration says its message has been consistent: “If you took out a student loan, it is your responsibility to pay it back,” said Nicholas Kent, Under Secretary for the U. S. Department of Education. Spencer Platt/Getty Images“They're hoping that the next administration will make forgiveness happen, and/or revitalize something like the SAVE Plan,” said Betsy Mayotte, who leads The Institute of Student Loan Advisors.Mayotte doesn’t think that reversal is going to happen. But it’s understandable to think it might — Mayotte calls the past five years the most chaotic in student loan policy history. “The whiplash of the different policy proposals, and ‘You have this available.’ ‘No, you don't,’ just makes borrowers uneasy and anxious and angry,” she said. It also makes them less likely to pay back their debt. A new working paper looks at how borrowers responded to the Biden administration’s decision to offer $10,000 in loan forgiveness in 2022. “People who believed that their student loans were going to be forgiven, they would essentially do everything possible to avoid paying down their loans,” said Constantine Yannelis at the University of Cambridge, one of the paper’s authors. But the Supreme Court blocked that program, and when student loans ultimately came due, those borrowers were more likely to become delinquent. “Of course, delinquency is a very bad outcome. There's damage to credit scores. It can delay people from purchasing homes,” Yannelis said.He said when the government changes its message, borrowers are less likely to believe the government will do what it said it’s going to do. The Trump administration says its message has been consistent: “If you took out a student loan, it is your responsibility to pay it back,” said Nicholas Kent, Under Secretary for the U. S. Department of Education. Kent said he empathizes with borrower who are frustrated, but that the SAVE plan created artificially low monthly payments. He is pointing people toward a new option: the Repayment Assistance Plan, or RAP, where monthly payments are still based on income, but won’t be as low as zero. And unlike the Biden-era SAVE plan, it’s part of a law that was passed by Congress.“Repayment plans that are Congressionally authorized have staying power,” he said. Still, laws are written on paper, not stone. Betsy Mayotte of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors said prior to last summer, Congress had never taken away an existing benefit from borrowers. But then, the same law that created the RAP plan also began phasing out a couple of other payment plans, in addition to SAVE. “So, part of the questions that we get these days are, ‘Well, you know, it looks like such and such a plan is best for me, but what happens if they get rid of it in a year or two years or five years?’” said Mayotte. She added that that’s made borrowers even less confident as they make long-term decisions with big financial consequences.