New America
Education Policy

Negotiated Rulemaking 2025

Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) Committee
Blog Post
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Higher Education Policy Program

Oct. 30, 2025

Last updated on November 7, 2025.

On July 25, 2025, the Department of Education announced its intention to establish a negotiated rulemaking committee—the Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) Committee—to implement certain higher education provisions in Public Law 119-21 (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act). Among other provisions in P.L. 119-21, the RISE Committee is negotiating the following issues:

  • Phase-out of graduate and professional PLUS Loans.
  • Establishment of new annual loan limits for graduate and professional students and parent borrowers, and implementation of new lifetime borrowing caps.
  • Simplification of student loan repayment plans into a standard repayment plan and a single income-based Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) for new borrowers, elimination of the Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) plan, and streamlining requirements for Income-Based Repayment plans for existing borrowers.
  • Institutional flexibility to apply lower annual limits for student and parent borrowers for selected programs of study.
  • Modifications to loan rehabilitation, including allowing defaulted borrowers to rehabilitate their loans a second time and setting minimum monthly payment amounts for such loans, phase-out of unemployment and economic hardship deferments, and limitations on a borrower's ability to receive a general forbearance.

This website provides information about the RISE Committee, including issue papers, proposals from negotiators, data, and more with a focus on the second session, held from November 3-7, 2025. (You can register to watch RISE Session 2 here.)

New America’s higher education team will continue to update this website as the rulemaking progresses.

Materials from Session 1 (September 29 - October 3, 2025):

Materials Submitted by Negotiators Between Sessions 1 and 2:

Materials from Session 2 (November 3-7, 2025):

You can register to watch RISE Session 2 here.

Responses to Negotiator Requests for Data: