We’re at the Beginning of a Harsh New Era for College Students

Five years ago, as death, panic, and viruses were spreading across the globe, the Trump administration announced it was halting collections of college debt. At the time, almost everyone agreed this was a good idea. “It is going to make a lot of students happy,” President Donald Trump remarked.

This week, an entire Biden administration later, Trump’s Department of Education began throwing the full force of the federal government against people who had defaulted on their student loans. Employers will be contacted, wages garnished, and debt collectors deployed.

The move came a week after House Republicans released plans for a massive overhaul of student financial aid policy. Their bill would reduce the number of students eligible for need-based federal financial aid, make it harder for students to pay for tuition, books and living expenses, increase monthly loan payments for millions of borrowers, and make some people wait as much as 20 years longer to have their debts forgiven. Student happiness will no longer be a consideration.

Sometimes, members of Congress propose radical changes they know have little chance of becoming law. This isn’t one of those times. The Republican plan is part of the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, some version of which is likely to pass Congress before the year is out.

The much-debated dream of broad-scale debt relief and friendly student loans is fading. This is the beginning of a harsh new era for the roughly 43 million people who hold almost $1.7 trillion in federal student loans. For people who are struggling to make ends meet and are most vulnerable to Trump’s government service cuts and the economic devastation of his reckless trade policies, the timing couldn’t be worse.

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