Is PSLF a no-brainer for academics?

[deleted1154873]

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If my long term career goal is to work in an R1 academic hospital as a physician, it would seem that PSLF would be a no-brainer (residency and my eventual employers would almost certainly qualify as 501(c)(3)). Any reasons not to do this route if I plan on doing academics? I guess there’s always concern about the politics of 10 years from now being different, but I’ve read you’re also guaranteed to PSLF since it is baked into the MPN of the loans when you take them out? Is that true? I don’t plan on doing a high-earning specialty, so I think it makes even more sense to go for debt forgiveness. My other option is one of the military service scholarships (which I have an interest in outside of the money, but it seems PSLF would just be a faster way to my long term goals). TIA

 

[RangerBob]

Depends on your loan burden. Certainly if you owe $300k or more but only make $200k then PSLF is worth it/often a no-brainer.

To my knowledge PSLF is baked-in/written in stone as much as anything can be. It's in my MPN. With that said, could a hostile administration defund the Dept of Ed to the extent that managing PSLF becomes undoable? Certainly. We've seen how tough a time the Dept of Ed is having right now trying to manage all the additional stuff being requested by them by the Biden admin.

That level of defunding would cause massive issues outside just PSLF. Presumably FAFSA/all college loans would be affected in such a scenerio.

A more realistic "worst-case" scenario would be for a new administration to stall PSLF, and delay processing of PSLF through some mechanism, but I imagine it would eventually get processed with refunds for any overpayments. I highly doubt they could stall that long though, since lawsuits would rise up pretty quickly.

Nothing is guaranteed. But I would personally bank on PSLF being around without too much hassle. To be safe though, plan to make up an extra year or two of payments after your 10th year in case any politicians do try delay/defund tactics. Again, you'd get a refund of any of those extra payments.

The big thing you need to look into is whether your employer is actually eligible. Most residency programs that seem PSLF-eligible truly are--you're employed by the non-profit medical center/university. But it's not uncommon for the attending physicians there to actually be employed by a for-profit physicians foundation and not the non-profit medical center/university. So make sure you look at who your actual employer would be (ie, who signs your paycheck) when you look at attending jobs.

 

[RangerBob]

Great, thanks for sharing your insights. Paying some more and refunding if there are delay/defunds wouldn't be an issue I think. And sounds like if they want to massively defund/overhaul PSLF, then that's the least of the worries...

For attending jobs, what would you estimate the percentage of non-profit medical center/university jobs that are actually funded by a for-profit source to be?

Unfortunately I don't have a good estimate--all I know is that in some cases attendings won't be eligible for PSLF while their residents will.

I imagine at most academic center attendings are PSLF-eligible. But something anyone banking on PSLF will want to verify before accepting a job at a particular institution.