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Student advocates have for years complained about the complex set of options borrowers must navigate to repay their student loans. Student loan borrowers are faced with a dizzying nine repayment plans based on their income, in addition to a standard 10-year loan-repayment plan.

There's a growing consensus that Congress should reduce those options to one income-based option on top of the standard plan.

Senator Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Senate education committee, would go one step further, calling for loan payments to be automatically deducted from borrowers' paychecks.

Alexander put forward the idea this month as part of a package he portrayed as an attainable plan for tackling the burden of student loan debt through legislation to renew the Higher Education Act. Although Alexander is motivated to pass a law thanks to his pending retirement, reaching a deal in a divided Congress is still widely seen as a serious challenge; many Democrats and advocates for students have clamored for ambitious, and expensive, federal solutions to college affordability. The framework advanced by Alexander instead focuses on making the student aid currently available work more effectively. He's prioritized making loan repayment more manageable, simplifying the process to apply for federal financial aid and judging colleges based on students' loan repayment.

While the proposal to reduce the myriad repayment options for borrowers already has broad support among higher ed interest groups, getting buy-in for making student loan payments work more like payroll taxes is more uncertain.

Jessica Thompson, director of policy and planning at the Institute for College Access and Success, said streamlining the repayment plans available to borrowers is "an overdue change." But she said paycheck withholding for loan payments is "in reality a lot more complicated than it sounds."