The Trump administration’s bombastic attacks on the nation’s most prestigious universities have commanded the public’s attention all year long. Now congressional Republicans are poised to dramatically expand that onslaught. If you think the last few months have been bad for Harvard, brace yourself—the “big, beautiful bill” is coming, and with it, a new dimension of destruction.
While it’s mostly gone unremarked upon in the mainstream media, institutions of higher learning across the country are about to be pummeled by the looming reconciliation bill, which may portend an extinction event for higher education as we know it. The bill weaponizes working-class families’ reliance on debt to finance their college dreams with such intensity that not only will it push millions to the financial brink, it will push them out of higher education altogether.
For colleges and universities, the potential fallout is hard to overstate. Whatever schools survive are likely to be drained of working- and middle-class families, instead populated only by society’s most wealthy. As it is, millions of people rightly consider universities to be a costly endeavor that is irrelevant to their everyday life. But rather than remaking higher ed into a vibrant and more democratic institution, this bill threatens to do the opposite. It will cement the stereotype of higher education as an elite institution into an ironclad reality. On June 25, student debtors and their allies will be protesting these devastating cuts in Washington, D.C. But so far, very few elected officials are sounding the alarm on these issues with the fever pitch they deserve, let alone doing the work required to slow down and obstruct their passage into law.
The overhaul of the student lending system championed by Republican legislators has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility or balancing the budget. Instead, it provides an ominous articulation of the Republican Party’s authoritarian ambitions, one that is chillingly consistent with the bill’s massive increases for immigration and border security. This is not a budget bill, it is a debt and deportation bill—and one built on the fascist foundation laid by the Heritage Foundation’s now-notorious Project 2025.
As of this month, Lindsey Burke, formerly the Heritage Foundation’s top education policy official, serves as the Education Department’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs. As the author of Project 2025’s chapter on education policy, Burke recommended gutting student loan relief (along with diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and scientific research funding) to bring universities to heel and reorient American society toward the far right.
In the words of influential conservative activist Christopher Rufo, “Reforming the student loan programs could put the whole university sector into a significant recession” and state of “existential terror.” The goal is to use economic policy to impose an unpopular and stifling ideological agenda, exacted by punitive student debt.
Whereas President Biden’s administration was defined by debates over how much student debt should get canceled and how quickly, this bill kicks away the concept of student loan relief altogether. In a draconian sweep, this bill removes the congressionally authorized power to cancel federal student loans that sitting presidents have long possessed. This means that even if the Democrats win back the White House in 2028, the next president will lack a critical tool—one that Biden possessed but, to his lasting shame, refused to use.
Though many details are not yet settled, as the Senate and House negotiate between their respective versions, there is no doubt that the bill’s impact will be immediate and profound. Eight million student debtors will see their monthly payments spike from $0 to over $400. Dentists and doctors who choose to work in low-paying community health care centers will no longer be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs, dramatically reducing the number of health care providers in communities that are already underserved. The bill even comes after the long-standing, Republican-approved federal student loan repayment plans, which allow borrowers to discharge their debts after a certain number of years of regular payments.
While existing repayment programs cancel loans after 10 to 25 years of repayment, this bill moves the goalposts back to 30 years. As it is, Americans over 60 are the fastest-growing demographic of student debtors: the only age cohort to increase every single quarter of President Biden’s administration. This bill will all but ensure millions of working people carry their debts until death.
House Republicans, whose proposals are even more extreme than their Senate colleagues’, want to end subsidized loans, driving up costs by tens of thousands of dollars, and place restrictive caps on federal loan amounts. The House bill viciously cuts Pell Grants while increasing the course load required for part-time students to access aid, making it more difficult for people with jobs or family responsibilities to afford to study.
Both House and Senate versions strive to reduce Parent PLUS and Grad PLUS programs, decreasing working-class families’ abilities to take on loans commensurate with the costs of tuition. Families that can’t afford to pay up front will either have to take their chances with private lenders—who are likely to shut out the neediest families—or choose to forgo the education altogether. Those who take the gamble will face rising debt loads with little possibility of relief, prompting a doom loop of delinquencies, defaults, and tanked credit scores, exacerbating the financial precarity of already over-stressed and stretched borrowers.
These cuts won’t just harm students who rely on loans to afford college; they will take the doors off colleges’ and universities’ capacity to expand minds and redistribute opportunity. Lost revenue will encourage schools to close programs, squeeze staff, and perhaps shutter entirely. A proposed endowment tax for colleges and universities has prompted fury among higher education lobbyists, but those players have said very little about the bill’s vigorous imposition of debt as a tool of social control.
Most insidiously, the House bill conscripts colleges and universities themselves into debt. Under the guise of “accountability,” House Republicans want to force colleges and universities to pay back any unpaid federal loans for “high risk” students. This move is designed to penalize institutions for serving the low-income students who often struggle to pay their loans and discourage them from offering majors that are not maximally remunerative. They want to turn the working-class kid studying to become a social worker, artist, or a physician into a liability to her university.
This kind of social engineering through debt isn’t new. In fact, it hails from the origins of the student loan crisis. In the early 1960s, an ambitious politician named Ronald Reagan made his name by picking a fight with the students protesting racism and war on the state’s then tuition-free campuses. “Those there to agitate and not to study might think twice before they pay tuition—they might think twice how much they want to pay to carry a picket sign,” he said. As California’s governor, Reagan tapped into his base’s anxieties about a rapidly integrating and evolving society to chip away at state support for education. As president, he doubled down on this strategy, following the recommendations of the first edition of the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership, Project 2025’s precursor, slashing Pell Grants and tightening student loan eligibility for middle-class families.
As Ryann Liebanthall details in Unburdened, an in-depth history of the student debt crisis, the number of Black college freshmen fell by nearly 8 percent between 1980 and 1983. More than any other figure, Reagan deserves credit for undermining what once passed as common sense in the U.S.—the principle that public college should be high quality, widely accessible, and tuition-free. Like today’s Republicans, Reagan invoked the figure of the student protester, the specter of racial equality, and the tool of student debt to implement a retrograde agenda.
Contemporary Republicans are even more brazen. Consider a recent report released by the Heritage Foundation that recommends terminating higher education “subsidies” and student loan cancellation in order to “increase the married birthrate.” What does this goulash mean in plain English? Widespread access to college has enabled women to envision lives beyond childrearing; restricting access will increase fertility rates. Conservative power players are more than willing to cast the country into a scientific dark age in their quest to shore up traditional worldviews, outmoded hierarchies, and concentrated wealth.
The reconciliation bill threatens to supercharge their oligarchic cause. Rising costs will reinforce the perception that education is the domain of an out-of-touch elite, prompting many to abandon or abort their academic dreams, which will resegregate broad swaths of society. The threat of mounting debt will discourage people from studying their passions or pursuing careers in public service, steering them instead toward the private sector or the military. It will weaken the general bargaining position of workers, who will be less able to use education as a path of upward mobility, while making the labor force more docile; workers burdened by debt are less likely to strike. By funneling student debtors’ ballooning payments into Wall Street coffers and regressive tax cuts, it will ensure that social and economic disparities become more entrenched.
And it will shrink our horizons. At their best, colleges and universities are not just places where people get trained in a skill or earn a degree; they enable people to grapple with bigger questions—to find out who they are, to unlock what they want to be and do, to discover how the world is made, and to dream how it could be remade differently. This is why authoritarians find education so threatening, and why the reconciliation bill must be understood as a strike against our freedom to question, learn, and choose our fates. Even, or especially, when that process challenges authority.
While some Democratic leaders have begun to warn of the economic dangers posed by this bill, none yet seem to grasp the existential stakes—nor the transformative vision required to build the political will required to change course.
Where higher education is concerned, it is not enough to defend a status quo that the American public knows is broken. Today, an astonishing $1.6 trillion in federal student loans crushes nearly 43 million people. This insurmountable burden has made ordinary people increasingly skeptical of the value of education and more susceptible to anti-intellectual appeals.
To counter the Republicans’ vision for higher education, Democrats must go far beyond a milquetoast goal of a less predatory student debt system. They must articulate a galvanizing vision for free college. The measure is popular: Surveys show that many people, including pluralities of Republicans and independents, are supportive of free college, despite decades of Republican propaganda demonizing academia. In recent months, faculty, staff, students, and student debtors have come together to lay this groundwork. It’s time for Democratic politicians to catch up. We need a legislative and executive agenda that courageously resists Republican tyranny by defending higher education as a public good that is both universal and free. Free as in cost and, just as importantly, free as in aimed at enhancing individual and collective freedom. We can’t afford anything less.
The post The Republican Plot to Un-Educate America appeared first on New Republic.
