Federal student loans issued since 2000 would be eligible for subsidies based on the new calculation. The New America Foundation, which drew attention to the proposed change on its Higher Ed Watch blog, estimated that the change would increase the subsidy rate by 0.5 percentage points...

"Congress is not skilled at setting a payment rate that is neither too high nor too low," wrote New America's Jason Delisle. "Worse yet, Congressional subsidy setting is subject to dangerous amounts of influence by student-loan company lobbyists." Original article(subscription required)