Author: Cory Turner

Students toss their mortarboards in the air at a 2018 commencement ceremony at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images For the past two decades, graduate students have been able to take out an unlimited amount of federal student loans to cover the full cost of their education. If they needed $60,000 a year, they could borrow $60,000 a year, year after year. The Trump administration has a plan to change that by capping graduate school loans for many students at $20,500 a year, and $100,000 overall — effective July…

The Trump administration says it is moving some of the Education Department’s most important responsibilities, including oversight of special education and student civil rights, to other agencies. A MARTÍNEZ, HOST: The U.S. Department of Education is about to lose some of its signature responsibilities. An announcement from the Trump administration says agreements have been signed with other agencies to run federal special education programs and enforce students’ civil rights protections. NPR education correspondent Cory Turner is covering this. So, Cory, let’s start with special education. What’s happening there?CORY TURNER, BYLINE: Yeah. So the Education Department is shifting much of the…

Starting on July 1, the federal government will make some big changes to how student loans can be repaid or forgiven. A MARTÍNEZ, HOST: Some major student loan changes go into effect on July 1. They were part of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Act last year. NPR education correspondent Cory Turner runs through the top six changes in 90 seconds.CORY TURNER, BYLINE: All right. Here we go.(SOUNDBITE OF TIMER BEEPING)TURNER: One – it’s the end of the short-lived Biden-era repayment plan called SAVE. If you’re one of the 7 million borrowers who is still enrolled in SAVE, it’s time to…

Student loan borrowers who sign up for, or already use, auto pay will get a 1 percentage point discount on interest for two years, starting July 1. Daniel de la Hoz/Moment RF via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Daniel de la Hoz/Moment RF via Getty Images Student loan borrowers who enroll in automatic payments will get a much bigger discount on interest starting July 1, the U.S. Department of Education says. Auto pay has long offered a modest discount off borrowers’ interest rate — .25 percentage points — but after millions of borrowers opted out during the long COVID…

On July 1, a host of new student loan changes from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will kick in, including the end of a short-lived Biden-era repayment plan, the start of two Republican-designed repayment plans and strict new borrowing limits for some students. There’s a lot to parse, and not every change will impact every borrower. So we’ve designed this story to make it easy to find the guidance that does apply to you, or to the borrower in your life. To get started, click on the student loan status that best describes your situation below: You’re enrolled…

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has acknowledged that, in some areas, the overall reduction-in-force at her agency has gone too far. Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images President Donald Trump’s plans to close the U.S. Department of Education have run headlong into an awkward reality: The agency does important work that still needs doing. After losing roughly half its staff in last year’s big reduction-in-force, the department’s student loan office is in a hiring boom. The Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) is adding around 380 new workers, according to internal documents obtained…

A nurse checks a patient’s heart rate. kieferpix/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption kieferpix/Getty Images A coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday challenging a Trump administration rule that limits access to federal student loans for borrowers earning a graduate degree in several popular, healthcare-related fields. “Higher education is expensive, and our health care system is already under immense strain,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “This rule will shut talented people out of critical professions and leave communities with fewer health care providers they desperately need.”…

The pandemic-era backslide in math and reading scores for students across the U.S. was not a sudden catastrophe but the continuation of a brutal, decade-long “learning recession” that began years before COVID-19’s arrival. That’s according to the latest Education Scorecard, an annual deep-dive into student data from The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research. The new Scorecard, released Wednesday and in its fourth year, offers several revelations for families, educators and policymakers looking for clarity — and hope — at a time when public education has been blamed and battered for those…

With school choice programs ascendant not just in Iowa but across the U.S., Cedar Rapids offers a preview of who wins and who loses when education meets the free market. JUANA SUMMERS, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I’m Juana Summers.SCOTT DETROW, HOST: And I’m Scott Detrow. As in many Republican-controlled states, Iowa’s leaders have gone all in on school choice, pushing to create and expand alternatives to public schools. This has created a big problem for the Cedar Rapids public school district, which has been losing students and dollars to the competition, and now it is…

The average salary for a public school teacher in the U.S. rose to $74,495 in the last school year, up 3.5% from the year before. But adjusted for inflation, today’s teachers are estimated to be earning less, not more, than they were in 2017. That’s according to a new review of school-related data from the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers union with 3 million members. The annual release includes the latest data — collected directly from state departments of education – on teacher and support staff salaries, student enrollment and even how much money schools are getting…