Education Secretary Linda McMahon slammed “worthless” college degrees and took aim at former President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness policies in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece this week as the Trump administration gears up to enforce repayment.
On May 5, the Department of Education will begin moving 1.8 million student borrowers into repayment plans and resume collection efforts that were paused by the Biden administration, including wage garnishments for those who default.
“Why? Not because we want to be unkind to student borrowers,” McMahon insisted in her Monday essay. “Borrowing money and failing to pay it back isn’t a victimless offense. Debt doesn’t go away; it gets transferred to others. If borrowers don’t pay their debts to the government, taxpayers do.”
But, even as she took student borrowers to task, McMahon acknowledged that accountability “is a two-way street” and said that the Trump administration “will also push colleges to be responsible and transparent.”
“Many of the degree-granting programs that qualify for student loans are worthless on the job market, but colleges continue to accept students to these programs and encourage them to borrow to pay for them,” she wrote.
“Colleges and universities call themselves nonprofits, but for years they have profited massively off the federal subsidy of loans, hiking tuition and piling up multibillion-dollar endowments while students graduate six figures in the red,” McMahon said. “A widely cited 2015 study found that for every dollar of increased federal caps on subsidized loans, colleges raised tuition by 60 cents.”
As of the end of last year, the outstanding federal student loan debt reportedly totaled approximately $1.64 trillion, while the Biden administration forgave $188.8 billion in student loan debt for 5.3 million borrowers.
Calling Biden’s student loan policies “unsustainable for both students and taxpayers,” McMahon said that the Democrat president never had the authority to forgive student loans in the first place, as the Supreme Court found in 2023.
“But for political gain, he dangled the carrot of loan forgiveness in front of young voters, among other things by keeping in place a temporary COVID-era deferment program,” she wrote. “Thus the Education Department allowed students to rack up a massive debt that is now long past due.”
Speaking directly to student borrowers with a federal loan balance, McMahon said they must restart paying down their debt if they have not been making regular payments.
“Our Federal Student Aid office is providing every form of assistance we legally can to ensure that a monthly payment can fit into your budget,” she wrote. “We recently extended the FSA call-center operations with weekend hours to ensure that your individual questions can be answered. We are updating the loan simulator to help calculate your easiest repayment plan. We also provide an advanced AI assistant, Aidan, to help pinpoint your best financial strategy.”
Borrowers who are in default will receive emails from Federal Student Aid directing them to contact the Default Resolution Group to set up a monthly payment or enroll in an income-driven repayment plan, the Education Department said.
“We are committed to ensuring that borrowers are paying back their loans, that they are fully supported in doing so, and that colleges can’t create such a massive liability for students and their families, jeopardizing their ability to achieve the American dream,” McMahon said.
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