President-elect Trump’s past moves and rhetoric on student loans are leaving a dismal outlook for advocates who are now focusing their attention on getting President Biden to act quickly on forgiveness before his time is up.
Trump has made it clear he will not be continuing the mass student debt relief Biden has given borrowers and may even try to reverse some of the proposals by the current administration.
And Biden is in a bind as many of his actions on student loans are either tied up in the court system or aren’t even set to begin until next year.
“Now it’s time for him, for his legacy’s sake, if nothing else, to make good on these long-standing promises,” said Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice.
Advocates are staring down another four years of Trump, remembering his first term when he reversed some student loan policies enacted during the Obama administration and proposed getting rid of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program entirely.
Since leaving the White House, Trump has not often tackled student loan debt as an issue but did often celebrate Biden’s losses in court, such as when the Supreme Court struck down his universal relief proposal in 2023.
“Yesterday, the Supreme Court also ruled that President Biden is not allowed to wipe out hundreds and hundreds of billions, probably trillions, of dollars in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who have paid their debt through hard work and diligence,” Trump said at the time.
The once and future president has made it clear he will not be rolling out a loan forgiveness program, a big change from Biden, who gave the most debt relief in presidential history, forgiving $175 billion for 5 million Americans.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
Biden’s record as a proponent of both loan forgiveness and systemic changes has earned him some trust from advocates, but both his time and options are severely limited at this point.
“President Biden has done the most, more than any other administration, to kind of help put a handle on the student loan debt crisis we have in this country. We are open to a range of solutions to the problem. We anticipate there will be future legal challenges, and I think that the administration just needs to kind of whatever tools are in the toolkit they need to deploy all of those tools. And I think the administration would be the best to determine what would make the most sense and what would be the safest route from challenge at this point,” said Kristin McGuire, executive director of Young Invincibles, a group focused on issues that matter to young voters.
Student loan activists will see much of their influence come to an end with a second Trump White House, and they view the next two months as their last chance for fruitful activity for at least four years.
“I think one of the easiest things Biden could do is finalize the one-time account adjustment. There’s still many borrowers that could receive a cancelation through the one-time account adjustment, and they have yet to do the last run, and that’s something that’s been ongoing for the last almost two years,” said Natalia Abrams, president and founder of the Student Debt Crisis Center.
Account adjustments give credit to borrowers on plans that require them to pay on their loans for a certain amount of time before the debt is forgiven.
Abrams also says there is a possibility of speeding up Biden’s efforts on a plan B for relief for certain groups of borrowers, although it would be tight, as the finalization of the effort was not supposed to happen until next spring.
Other measures that are in the court system right now, such as the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan are also highly vulnerable when the support of the Biden administration dissipates.
Collinge said Friday he had sent out a mass action email to Student Loan Justice’s more than 1 million members.
“We’re sending a message to the president today asking him to do two things. One, return bankruptcy rights to all federal student loans, which he can do by executive order […] And the second thing, obviously, we’re asking him to use the Higher Education Act to cancel loans,” Collinge said.
“He’s had that power his whole time in office. He’s never used it,” he added.
But he added there is still hope, albeit small, for meaningful change under Trump.
“President Trump, before he even ran for president in 2015, he was asking things like, ‘Why is the federal government viewing student loans as a profit center? It makes no sense.’ And he was right then. And I think that if he sticks with his gut, it will serve him well going forward,” Collinge said.
Collinge also praised Trump’s willingness to use executive orders on student loans, such as when he forgave loans for 25,000 disabled veterans. Trump also used his executive authority to pause student loans during the pandemic.
“Trump is a bold guy, and we’re counting on him being bold and honest and courageous,” he added.
