It is identical to last year’s situation, when a similar funding crisis resulted in a year extension of current rates, Meyers said.

The good news, she said, is the 14,400 MSU students who received a collective $56 million in subsidized loans from 2012-13 won’t face increased interest rates. They will pay the same rate under which they took them out, no matter what.

But the 20,000 MSU students offered loans next year — worth a collective $80 million — might take the hit.

Still, Don Heller, dean of the College of Education, said he doesn’t think the increase would impact students in any substantial way.

“If Congress doesn’t reach a compromise on interest rates, it won’t be catastrophic,” Heller said in an email.

Heller said it’s hard to predict what long-term plan will come out of Washington, D.C., as the proposals from “the Republicans and the administration are far apart.”

Philip Kim, a student here for the summer in an undergraduate engineering research program, said that while an interest rate hike would hurt his wallet, it wouldn’t affect him dramatically.

“I guess I’d have to deal with it,” Kim said, who borrows an average $2,000 a year as a chemical engineering major at the City College of New York.

The average after-college debt burden is about $26,000, according to a study from the Institute for College Access and Success in Washington, D.C. U.S. student debt totals roughly $1 trillion, higher than auto, credit and home equity loan debts.