Miranda Levi

My student loan payment increased by more than 1,800%.

That is not a little higher. It is not an adjustment. It is not “tightening the budget.”

It is almost twenty times the payment.

And I do not have it.

That is the part that gets lost in every political conversation about student loans. People talk about debt like it is an abstract moral failure. They talk about borrowers like we bought yachts, not degrees. They talk about repayment like it is simply a matter of discipline, as if we have been hiding disposable income in a junk drawer and only need to be scolded into using it.

But I have been paying.

I originally borrowed $113,998. I have made payments every single month for the last thirteen straight years, and off and on before that depending on when I was in school. I have done what borrowers are told to do. I have stayed in contact. I have made the payments. I have worked. I have served.

Today, after all of that, I still owe $166,155.

That is $52,157 more than I originally borrowed.

Not less.

More.

After thirteen years of payments, I have not even made a dent in the original amount. Instead, the balance has grown by more than fifty thousand dollars in interest.

That is the part I cannot make peace with.

I am a firm believer that education should be free and accessible to everyone. I do not think a person’s future should depend on whether their family has money, whether they were lucky enough to get scholarships, or whether they were eighteen years old and somehow supposed to understand the lifelong financial consequences of borrowing for school.

But even setting that belief aside, I am not saying I should never have to pay anything back.

I am okay paying back what I borrowed.

What I am not okay with is paying for thirteen years and owing more than I started with.

I am not okay with a system where a payment can suddenly increase by more than 1,800%, as if that money is supposed to materialize out of sheer personal responsibility.

I am not okay with being told that education is the path forward, then being financially punished for taking that path.

I worked as an educator. I worked for the City of Seattle. I worked as a 911 dispatcher. I have done jobs that gave back to the communities I lived in. I went into public service. I followed the spirit of what Public Service Loan Forgiveness was supposed to be: work in service, make your payments, and after ten years, the remaining balance can be forgiven.

The program still exists, at least in name. Federal guidance still describes Public Service Loan Forgiveness as a path for eligible borrowers to have their remaining balance discharged after 120 qualifying payments.

But if you have ever tried to navigate student loans, you already know that “the program exists” and “the program works smoothly for the people who need it” are two very different sentences.

I had less than two years left, or at least that is what I understood. And now? Now the rules, payment plans, lawsuits, transitions, and policy changes feel like a maze that keeps moving while borrowers are inside it.

This is not only happening to me.

In recent years, millions of borrowers have been pushed through repayment plan changes, administrative pauses, legal fights, and shifting federal guidance. The SAVE plan, income-driven repayment, interest accrual, forbearance, forgiveness counts, and transition deadlines have all become part of a system borrowers are somehow expected to understand while also working, parenting, surviving, and trying to build a life.

That is millions of people being told the ground under their financial lives has shifted.

So when people ask why borrowers are panicking, that is why.

Because for many of us, the numbers were already impossible before the newest wave of changes. The student loan system was already a trapdoor. The interest was already eating our payments. The balance was already growing while we were doing the “right” thing.

And now the payment is supposed to increase by more than 1,800%.

That is not a line item on a spreadsheet to me. That is life.

That is rent money. Grocery money. Medical money. Car repair money. Emergency savings money. House down payment money. Childcare money. Small business money. Retirement money.

And the hardest part is that I am not the exception. I am one person inside a national crisis.

The federal student loan portfolio is measured in the trillions of dollars, spread across tens of millions of borrowers. Millions of people are in repayment, delinquency, forbearance, or some kind of administrative limbo. These are not tiny numbers. These are not isolated cases. These are millions of people trying to survive a repayment system that often feels designed to keep balances alive as long as possible.

And yes, I know the government accounting here is complicated.

There are people who will argue that the federal student loan program does not make a profit when you account for defaults, administrative costs, forgiveness, subsidies, and the government’s own borrowing costs.

Fine.

Let’s acknowledge that.

But from the borrower side, this still feels very simple: money is leaving households and flowing into a system that keeps growing balances instead of shrinking them.

The Department of Education’s own financial reporting has shown tens of billions of dollars in Direct Loan Program revenue from interest and administrative fees. However the government chooses to categorize that money on paper, borrowers are still paying it.

And for scale, that amount of money could do extraordinary things if it were not being extracted from people who wanted an education.

What would happen if less of our public education system was built around interest?

What would happen if the money borrowers are paying into interest went toward actually lowering tuition, expanding grants, funding community colleges, supporting trade programs, or making public universities affordable again?

What would happen if people could use that money to buy homes, have children, start businesses, leave abusive relationships, save for retirement, or simply breathe?

Because borrowers are not refusing to contribute to society.

Many of us are the people already contributing.

We are teachers. Dispatchers. Social workers. City employees. Nonprofit workers. Healthcare workers. Public defenders. Librarians. Government employees. Parents. Small business owners. Artists. Caregivers. People who were told that education would open doors, then spent adulthood trying to keep the debt from swallowing the house.

Some of the newer repayment proposals have been described as simplified income-based options, with payments tied to income and possible interest protections for borrowers who pay on time. That sounds better on paper than runaway interest.

But some plans also stretch repayment across decades.

Thirty years of payments.

I am sorry, but if your solution to educational debt is “pay until you are old enough to have raised an entire adult human,” then maybe the system is the problem.

And that is what I want people to understand.

This is not about wanting something for nothing.

This is about a country that tells people education matters, then allows education to become financially devastating. It is about a government loan system where a person can borrow $113,998, pay for thirteen years, and still owe $166,155. It is about interest turning a degree into a lifelong financial sentence.

It is about being told to better yourself, then being billed for the rest of your life for believing that promise.

I do not regret my education.

I regret the system attached to it.

I regret that we have normalized young people signing contracts they cannot possibly fully understand. I regret that public service workers have had to fight so hard for forgiveness programs they were promised. I regret that borrowers have to become experts in federal policy, tax forms, repayment plans, court injunctions, servicer errors, and acronyms just to avoid financial ruin.

Most of all, I regret that the conversation has been twisted into whether borrowers deserve help, instead of whether the system deserves to keep doing this to people.

Because no one should pay for thirteen years and owe more than they started with.

No one should watch a manageable payment become financially impossible overnight.

No one should be punished for wanting an education.

I am not asking for pity.

I am asking why this is acceptable.

Why is it acceptable to charge astronomical prices for education, then allow interest to grow so aggressively that people cannot dig themselves out?

Why is it acceptable for public servants to build careers around giving back, only to be trapped in paperwork, technicalities, and policy chaos when it is time for the system to honor its end of the deal?

Why is it acceptable for “repayment” to mean a balance goes up?

At some point, we have to stop pretending this is only a personal finance problem.

It is a public policy problem.

It is a labor problem.

It is a housing problem.

It is a family problem.

It is a mental health problem.

It is a future problem.

Because when millions of people cannot move forward, the country does not move forward either.

My payment increased by more than 1,800%. That’s not even the highest payback option. 1,800% is the lowest payback option.

And after thirteen years of payments, I owe $52,157 more than I borrowed.

That is not repayment.

That is a warning.