Trump’s Student Debt Plan Jeopardizes Equity

As a soon-to-be college student, the topic of education, particularly student debt, was perhaps of most relevance to me this past election. Though it garnered relatively little national attention (only 4% of adults think education is America’s most important issue, according to Gallup), no one can dismiss that education is the foundation upon which our society is built. The cost of education is a problem which impacts many, if not all, areas of society.

Trump, though he’s expressed questionable views regarding education funding, initially appears to have reasonable views on student debt. At first, I thought Trump’s position on student debt might be the one position of his I agree with. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel for The Washington Post called his plan “radical” and wrote that he promises “the most liberal student loan repayment plan since the inception of the federal financial aid program.”

Trump said in a speech to college students on October 13 that, under his plan, tuition repayment will be capped at 12.5%, according to USA Today. For every month that a student is in debt, he or she will repay no more than 12.5% of his or her income. Trump added, according to Douglas-Gabriel, that “if borrowers work hard and make their full payments for 15 years, we’ll let them get on with their lives. They just go ahead and they get on with their lives.”

Which sounds pretty good to me. REPAYE [Revised Pay As You Earn], the government’s current income-based loan repayment program, forgives debt after 20 years of payment, not 15. However, for direct loans taken from the federal government, REPAYE currently caps payments at 10% of monthly income, according to The Washington Post.

So Trump’s plan will either increase how much a student pays monthly toward their direct loans issued by the federal government, or “apply solely towards other loans, like private loans,” said Michael Schramm for USA Today. Trump’s campaign has said, according to The Washington Post, that the cap will apply to federal loans. However, Trump has also said that he wants to ban federal student loans issued by the Department of Education, according to The Young Turks. 

“Trump wants to restore a system in which private banks issue federal student loans,” policy director Sam Clovis said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, according to the LA Times

This is the part of Trump’s plan which worries me. Private banks used to issue student loans until 2010, according to the LA Times, when the Obama administration “began administering all federal student loans through its Direct Loan program.” A switch back to private loans will mean that banks can grant loans to students based on their “prospective future earnings,” or how likely they are to be able to repay their loans based on the financial prospects of their majors. 

Clovis said, according to the LA Times, that “it would be up to the colleges and banks to decide together which students could borrow student loans. The decision would be based on factors including the student’s major, choice of college and the potential to find a job after graduating.”

As someone who’s going to have about $60,000 to $80,000 in student loans by the time I graduate college, and as someone who probably won’t make much money after college, considering I’m not majoring in any type of science or business, this concerns me.

I’m aware that I made the choice to go to an expensive college. I recognize that this article might sound like me complaining about something I could have easily avoided by going to any other college I applied to. But when you have to choose between getting the best education possible and not facing a large amount of debt, it’s not actually that easy of a choice to make. I chose what I thought I would regret least, but now I feel more worried about the future than I thought I would.

Logically, I know that financial aid should be given to those who really need it, and I am much less deserving than most. I could have avoided debt and chose not to, while many others can’t avoid debt at all, or can’t even begin to consider college a possibility. I know that it would make no sense for a college to give me need-based aid when my struggle is just that I can’t afford to pay full private school tuition. I was ready to face loans, but I wasn’t ready for the possibility that I might not even be able to get any, or the possibility that private banks will control the interest rate of whatever they give me.

I understand the value in high-paying fields like medicine, engineering, and law. But equally important pursuits such as education, the arts, journalism, social work, for example, which are absolutely necessary for our society, are discouraged enough already by their relatively low monetary rewards. Students should not be prevented from pursuing these fields so that private banks can make the highest profit from their education. And students should not be prevented from taking loans based on the assumption that they will be lower wage earners in the future.

Private loans “always” have a higher interest rate, said pundit Ana Kasparian for The Young Turks. Private banks should not profit from manipulating the interest rates at which students pay back their loans.

Education shouldn’t be treated like a business. Education funding should be a priority to anyone who cares about the economy, the environment, general human welfare. Education should exist to provide equal opportunity, which no private bank can be trusted to care about when it decides which students in whom to invest.