The U.S. Department of Education’s work to cancel student debt for tens of millions of Americans will likely come to a halt with the election of Donald Trump, who has called the efforts “vile” and “not even legal.”
When Trump reenters the White House in January, he will probably direct his administration officials to stop defending the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness programs in court, experts say. Many of those plans are tied up in legal battles from lawsuits brought by Trump’s fellow Republicans.
“The Trump administration can notify the court that it is withdrawing its defense of the case,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
At a June 18 campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin, Trump celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision in 2023 to block President Joe Biden’s first attempt at broad student loan cancellation.
“He got rebuked, and then he did it again,” Trump said. “It’s going to get rebuked again, even more.”
As a result, the 40 million Americans who were repeatedly promised a reduction to or complete elimination of their debt will have to prepare to restart or continue making their monthly payments. The Biden administration’s latest student loan forgiveness efforts, which became known as Plan B after the Supreme Court blocked its first attempt, will likely fail in court without Biden administration attorneys fiercely defending it.
St. Louis-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp, a Trump appointee, issued the latest preliminary injunction against Biden’s revised student loan forgiveness plan. That policy would benefit as many as 3 in 4 federal student loan holders, when combined with the administration’s previous efforts, according to an estimate by the Center for American Progress.
“Given the election results, Republicans will likely try to stretch out the timeline in the court cases, while the Biden administration will try to accelerate it,” Kantrowitz said.
Outstanding education debt in the U.S. exceeds $1.6 trillion, according to a 2022 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Nearly 43 million people — or 1 in 6 adult Americans — carry student loans, the report said.
Student loan forgiveness likely to dry up under Trump
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks as he announces a new plan for federal student loan relief during a visit to Madison Area Technical College Truax Campus, in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S, April 8, 2024.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
Biden has forgiven more federal student debt than any other president. Since he took office, the Education Department has canceled the student loans of roughly 5 million people, totaling over $175 billion in relief. It has done so mostly by improving existing student loan relief programs that had long been plagued by problems.
For example, under the Biden administration, more than 1 million people have had their debt cleared under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007. That program allows certain not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years.
Before Biden took office, only 7,000 people had ever received the debt relief under PSLF, the Education Department said. The program’s rejection rate was as high as 98% in some years, it added.
It’s uncertain this relief will continue under Trump, experts said.
“The Biden administration has been making periodic announcements about loan forgiveness,” Kantrowitz said. “This would end during a Trump administration.”
Trump may be able to materialize these wishes if Republicans take over Congress. As of now, they have a majority in the Senate. The House is still up for grabs, with several races too close to call.
“The threat posed by these plans is real and will imperil the financial stability of millions of working families,” said Mike Pierce, the executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center.
People walk on the campus of the University of Southern California (USC) on March 21, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Yet many voters welcome Trump’s stance on student loan relief and question the fairness of forgiving the loans of those who have benefited from a higher education.
Just 15% of Republicans find student loan forgiveness important, compared with 58% of Democrats, according to a national poll from mid-May by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Proponents of the relief say spiraling higher education costs have forced many families to borrow to send their children to college, an increasingly necessary step to land among the middle class. Student debt disproportionately affects women and people of color.
For consumer advocates and borrowers, Trump’s friendly approach to the for-profit school industry is another cause for concern. The former president himself ran one of these schools, which supposedly specialized in real-estate business training, called Trump University. Like many for-profit school students, attendees of the school said they were duped with false advertising and high-pressure sales tactics.
While in office, Trump halted a regulation aimed at providing loan forgiveness to those defrauded by their schools.
“Trump’s Department of Education ignored federal law and refused to cancel the debts of students defrauded by their schools,” Pierce said.
The vice president-elect is another vocal critic of student loan forgiveness.
“Forgiving student debt is a massive windfall to the rich, to the college educated, and most of all to the corrupt university administrators of America,” Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, a Yale Law School graduate, wrote on X in April 2022. “Republicans must fight this with every ounce of our energy and power.”
Jane Fox, chapter chair of the Legal Aid Society Attorneys union, UAW local 2325, said it was hypocritical and incorrect of Vance to frame debt relief as a benefit to those who are well off.
“Student debt forgiveness is a working-class issue,” said Fox. “Those in the 1% who went to elite institutions and then worked in private equity as Senator Vance did rarely need debt relief.”