A dead weight. An albatross. The biggest regret of her life. Dottie Orzechowski has never known adulthood without student loan payments.

After working as a health and physical education teacher at a public school, she went back to college to earn more degrees to try to increase her pay and job security.

WATCH: What the end of a Biden-era student loan program means for borrowers

In total, she borrowed $117,000 from the federal government to fund her education, earning a master's and doctorate degree. She paid anywhere between $400 and $600 a month on an income-driven repayment plan, even as accruing interest grew her balance. Over time her balance grew to $215,000.

In 2023, Orzechowski enrolled in Saving on A Valuable Education (SAVE), a Biden-era repayment plan with generous terms intended to help struggling borrowers make affordable payments. As the plan was challenged in court, she was placed in legally mandated administrative forbearance, along with millions of other Americans. During that time, SAVE borrowers had a yearslong period of $0 payments.

Now, as the SAVE plan winds down this summer, she's facing the prospect of restarting payments at monthly rates she can no longer afford.

"It's been over 20 years, and you would never know that I made a payment at all," she said.

Her family's budget is stretched thin, as prices go up and wages remain stagnant.

"At some point if I have to make a decision between putting food on the table for my kids and paying my student loan, my student loans are not going to get paid," she said.

If the U.S. isn't already in the midst of a student loan delinquency and default crisis, we may be rapidly approaching one, experts told PBS News.

An impending wave of borrowers will restart payments — with way higher monthly bills than before — for the first time in years. They'll likely encounter a system that's inadequate at connecting people with the income-driven repayment plans they need.

"I hate to say it, I really hope I'm wrong," said Michele Zampini, associate vice president of federal policy and advocacy at The Institute for College Access and Success. "But just based on everything we've seen and everything we know and getting a sense of borrowers' experiences and the general kind of affordability crisis that a lot of people are facing across the board, all signs are pointing toward worse default rates than ever."

'It all kind of came crashing down'

Until 2020, around 1 million student loans went into default each year, according to data from the National Student Loan Data System. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the economy at a standstill, the federal government paused federal student loan repayments and suspended interest from accruing. That lasted for more than three years, and resulted in a near-total elimination of federal student loan delinquency and default.

As the country emerged from the pandemic but remained firmly mired in high inflation, the Biden administration proposed a handful of student debt reforms, including the introduction of the SAVE plan.

The income-driven repayment plan featured generous terms aimed at borrowers who were struggling to pay back their loans. Under this plan, there were very low or no monthly payments, an interest subsidy — so the loan balance never grew — and faster forgiveness for borrowers with smaller loans.

Zampini, whose organization helped the Biden administration craft SAVE, said the plan gave some borrowers who were behind the opportunity to re-enter the system with affordable payments, and others the opportunity to catch up before they went into default.

"And then," she said, "it all kind of came crashing down."

Nearly two years after Republican attorneys general challenged SAVE in federal court, throwing more than 7 million enrollees into forbearance limbo, an appeals court officially ended the rule that created the plan in March.

READ MORE: Biden's SAVE plan for student loans is officially dead. Here's what experts suggest now

The U.S. Department of Education informed borrowers enrolled in SAVE weeks later that they'll have 90 days from July 1 to pick a new plan or they'll be transferred into a standard repayment plan.That is something that would be unaffordable "almost by definition" for someone on SAVE, said Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director at Protect Borrowers.

With SAVE winding down, experts worry that delinquency and default rates will rise as a massive group of people already under financial strain are forced to navigate an underfunded and understaffed system.

A rise in serious delinquencies is a potential warning sign

SAVE enrollees leaving forbearance will join tens of millions of other federal student loan borrowers who began receiving bills again in late 2023 after the pandemic pause. The Education Department then created a yearlong "on-ramp," during which borrowers were required to make monthly payments but would not default if they missed payments.

Federal student loans are considered delinquent after one month of missed payment, but the government doesn't report borrowers to credit agencies until 90 days of nonpayment. After 270 days, borrowers are in default.

In 2024, all non-SAVE borrowers were again considered delinquent if they missed payments. Because it takes almost a full year of non-payment for federal student loans to be transferred into default, the end of 2025 marked the first time borrowers could default in nearly six years.

As of December, 7.7 million borrowers had loans in default, which the Education Department notes is a figure that matches the pre-pandemic count.

But for borrowers who are not yet in default, there are warning signs, said Lesley Turner, associate professor of public policy at University of Chicago.

Federal data also show that about 16% of borrowers in repayment are now seriously delinquent, or more than 90 days late, compared with about 10% in the last quarter before the pandemic, which does not include borrowers who have already defaulted.

That may not yet constitute a crisis, said Lesley Turner, associate professor of public policy at University of Chicago, "but it is higher than the pre-pandemic pause period."

That shows that "maybe we're not just returning to the world before the pandemic," she added, "but there's other things that are leading to higher delinquency rates than in the past."

Turner believes one major factor is the complexity of new income-driven repayment plans, some of which are set to end while new ones are introduced.

"The more uncertainty and complexity that gets added to the system, the more likely it is that there are borrowers who fall through the cracks, who maybe even could make payments but they get dropped off of auto-debit, or they've applied for an IDR plan but their application hasn't been processed," she said.

Another thorn: The labor market is different than it was pre-pandemic, especially for recent college grads and other young workers. Although unemployment was trending down for those groups before 2020, it has now been steadily rising, according to data from the New York Federal Reserve.

That's made it harder for Dwight Bejlovec, who graduated in 2022, to find a job at all, let alone one in his field of publishing. He applied to more than 200 jobs over the past six months without luck.

Still, he's been paying back the parent PLUS loan his father took out to fund the portion of his education not covered by scholarships. That's been possible while his federal loans were in SAVE forbearance. All told, he and his parents owe about $100,000.

"If I don't have a job by, say, two months from now, I just won't be able to pay off my loans," Bejlovec said. The burden would then fall to his parents, which he said is not viable.

"I guess I haven't considered failure as an option because it would be catastrophic," he said.

Is the Department of Education ready for the SAVE wave?

There are a handful of options available to borrowers forced to leave SAVE, including the new Repayment Assistance Plan, which will be available beginning July 1, alongside three other income-driven repayment plans. In nearly every case, payments will be higher than what they were under SAVE.

READ MORE: Major changes to student loan borrowing and repayment are coming. Here's what to know

"It just is a recipe for disaster," Zampini said. "If people can't afford the monthly payment, that's it. They can't afford the monthly payment. And people are not going to choose a student loan payment over covering basic needs."

That's the dilemma for Thomas Russell, who works in retail and substitute teaches in Ohio, making about $31,000 a year. He was credentialed in February to work full-time as a social studies teacher for grades 7 through 12.

His current loan balance is about $55,400, with a monthly payment just under $500.

"That's just not at all realistic with how much I make," he said.

As a result, his loans went into default at the beginning of the year. His credit score has taken a hit, despite being current on his car and credit card payments.

Russell knows exactly where all of his money goes, and he doesn't have any to spare on his student loans. After getting a high energy bill in November, he turned his heat off and didn't turn it back on for the rest of the winter.

"I live paycheck to paycheck. I'm lucky if I can put aside $50 a paycheck without having something come up," he said.

Millions of borrowers are likely to flood the Education Department's website, applications and phone lines in the coming months seeking answers and alternative plans. Experts worry the department, which has shrunk its workforce the past year, is woefully unprepared.

"You layer on the key concern of affordability and you add on the bureaucratic mess that we're in and just the lack of access and lack of customer support," and that creates an environment where borrowers already in default may not be able to escape, and new borrowers can fall into delinquency and eventually default, Zampini said.

According to a court-mandated monthly status report, part of a lawsuit against the Education Department by the American Federation of Teachers, nearly 554,000 applications for income-driven repayment plans were outstanding at the end of March.

"So what's going to happen when 7 million people suddenly, in a three-month period, file an application?" Berkman-Breen said.

Now is the time to make sure borrowers are getting appropriate, targeted information, Turner said. Borrowers coming out of forbearance need clear paths to getting on plans they can afford, and the implementation of new plans needs to be stress-tested.

Orzechowski, who now owes nearly double what she initially borrowed, has said she's had difficulty logging into her account to estimate what her monthly payments might be when they restart.

When she can, she'll recertify her income so she can start making payments under a new plan. But she's worried about the new expense.

"Like many people in America right now, my budget is hanging on by a thread," Orzechowski said. "And if I get one more payment thrown on top of it, or one more bill that goes up on top of it, the whole house of cards is going to come tumbling down."