Savannah Britt owes about $27,000 on loans she took out to attend college at Rutgers University. She hoped that this debt could be reduced through President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness efforts.
Their payments are currently on hold while courts resolve challenges to the loan forgiveness program. But as Biden’s term shortens, she could soon face a monthly payment of up to $250.
“With this new government, the dream is over. He failed,” said Britt, 30, who runs her own communications agency. “I was hopeful before Tuesday. I waited for the process. Even my mother took out a loan. “She wanted to support me, about $18,000, and she was in the process of forgiving her debt, but it stalled.”
President-elect Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have criticized Biden’s loan forgiveness efforts, and lawsuits from Republican-led states have stalled plans for sweeping debt relief. Trump hasn’t said what he would do about lending, leaving millions of borrowers facing uncertainty about their personal finances.
The economy was a major issue in the election and helped propel Trump to victory. But for borrowers, concerns about their finances go beyond inflation and include their student debt, said Persis Yu, executive counsel for the Student Borrower Protection Center.
“A big part of what makes life unaffordable for them is this cost burden that they can’t seem to escape,” Yu said.
Student loan cancellation was not a campaign focus for either Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, who avoided the issue at their political events. The issue came up only once during the presidential debate in September, when Trump criticized Harris and Biden for not following through on their promise of comprehensive forgiveness. Trump called it a “total disaster” that “mocked young people.”
Biden promised the student loan cancellation program during his presidential run. Since its introduction, Biden’s loan forgiveness has faced relentless resistance from opponents who said it gave an advantage to elites and came at the expense of those who paid off their loans or did not attend college.
Biden’s first plan to cut up to $20,000 for millions of people was blocked by the Supreme Court last year. A second, narrower plan was halted by a federal judge after Republican-led states sued. A separate policy aimed at lowering loan payments for troubled borrowers was suspended by a judge, even after Republican-controlled states objected to it.
Overall, Biden’s efforts were relatively unpopular even among those with student loans. According to a poll this spring by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, three in 10 U.S. adults said they disliked the way Biden handled student loan debt , approve. Four out of ten respondents rejected this. The others were neutral or didn’t know enough to say anything.
Project 2025, the blueprint for a rightward shift in American government that meets some Trump priorities, calls for the federal government to exit the student loan business and eliminate repayment plans that predated the Biden administration.
Even without directly addressing student loans, Trump has made promises that would affect them. He has promised to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, which manages the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. It is unclear which body would assume this responsibility if the department were abolished, which would require congressional approval.
Yu noted that the Biden administration has managed to cancel student loans for about five million borrowers, despite blocking signature forgiveness efforts. The government did this by relying on pre-existing loan cancellation programs. For example, an existing student loan forgiveness program for public workers has provided relief to more than a million Americans, up from just 7,000 approved before it was updated by the Biden administration two years ago.
“A lot of the cancellations we’ve seen in recent years have been because of the Biden administration’s commitment to making the programs that are actually written into law work for people,” Yu said.
Sabrina Calazans, 27, owes about $30,000 in federal student loans from her time at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania. Her payments have also been paused, but she could soon face a monthly payment of over $300.
“As a first-generation American, I live at home with my family, I contribute to our household finances, and this payment means a lot to me and so many others like me,” said Calazans, who is originally from Brazil.
In her role as executive director of the Student Debt Crisis Center, Calazans said she encouraged people to stay abreast of developments by using the loan simulator on the Federal Student Aid website and reading updated information on forgiveness qualifications and repayment programs.
“There is a lot of confusion about student loans,” Calazans said, and not just among teenage people. “We see a lot of parents taking on more debt so their children can go to school. We see older people going back to school and also having to take out loans.”
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Associated Press Education writer Collin Binkley in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.
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