Improving Income Driven Repayment for the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program and the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program

Document Headings Document headings vary by document type but may contain the following: the agency or agencies that issued and signed a document the number of the CFR title and the number of each part the document amends, proposes to amend, or is directly related to the agency docket number / agency internal file number the RIN which identifies each regulatory action listed in the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions See the Document Drafting Handbook for more details. Department of Education 34 CFR Part 685 [Docket ID ED-2023-OPE-0004] RIN 1840-AD81 AGENCY: Office of Postsecondary Education, Department of Education. ACTION: Announcement of early implementation date. SUMMARY: The U.S. Department of Education (Department) designates a regulatory provision in its final rule related to income-driven repayment for early implementation. DATES: January 16, 2024. For the implementation date of the regulatory provision, see SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION . FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Bruce Honer, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20202. Telephone: (202) 987-0750. Email: Bruce.Honer@ed.gov . If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Section 482(c)(1) of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA), requires that regulations affecting programs under title IV of the HEA be published in final form by November 1 prior to the start of the award year (July 1) to which they apply. Section 482(c)(2) of the HEA also permits the Secretary to designate any regulatory provision as one that an entity subject to the provision may choose to implement earlier and to outline the conditions for early implementation. On July 10, 2023, the Department published in the Federal Register a final rule amending regulations related to income-driven repayment ( 88 FR 43820 ). In that final rule we designated…