OPM has told agencies to report on their calendar year 2017 use of student loan reimbursements, one authority agencies can use to attract and keep employees in high-demand occupations where basic salaries are not competitive with the private sector’s.
Under the program, an agency can pay an employee up to $10,000 a year and up to $60,000 lifetime to be used pay off certain types of student loans. OPM wants information by March 31 on the numbers of recipients; the pay plan, occupational series, and job title of each; and the total dollar amounts paid out.
“We also invite you to share any additional information regarding best practices, lessons learned, program effectiveness, metrics used to measure program success, business case evaluation factors, program impediments, or other relevant details about your agency’s use of student loan repayments as a recruitment or retention tool. In addition, we encourage you to identify any ways to improve the student loan repayment program on a government-wide basis,” new OPM director Jeff Pon wrote in his first memo to agencies.
Agencies that didn’t use the authority are to explain why, and whether they have a policy in place that would allow its use.
Traditionally, use of the authority has been concentrated in just a few agencies, mainly DoD, VA, Justice, State and the SEC. By occupation, payments most commonly are in engineering, contracting, nursing and certain other medical-related fields, special agents, foreign affairs, attorney-advisers, accountants, HR, health science and various types of analysts.
