Trump Wants to Dismantle the Department of Education, but What Does That Mean for Student Loans?

Since taking office, Donald Trump has made it quite clear that he would like to reduce the size of the federal government. Among the biggest things on the chopping block is the entire Department of Education, which employs thousands of people.

Trump cannot actually unilaterally get rid of the Department of Education (it requires an act of Congress), but many want to know what will happen to student loans under Trump's administration, especially if he does succeed in getting rid of the department. Here's what we know.

One of the chief functions of the Department of Education is overseeing the student loans of 43 million borrowers across the country, per USA Today.

For anyone hoping that the loans would simply disappear, though, that won't be the case. Trump has made it clear that the loans would remain in effect, and payments would simply be sent to another department, which would absorb responsibility for overseeing them.

“I don’t think the education [department] should be handling the loans. That’s not their business,” Trump said, suggesting that the loans should instead be handled by the Treasury Department, the Department of Commerce, or the Small Business Administration.

What this means for sure, though, is that the loans are not going to go away just because the Education Department does.

Although they were not a core part of the 2024 election, one of Joe Biden's signature promises during his 2020 campaign was to forgive student loan debt, per CNBC. He tried to do exactly that upon taking office but was struck down by the Supreme Court.

At the time, many conservatives argued that forgiving student loans would be unfair to those who had not gone to school and had instead taken out other kinds of loans.

It's unsurprising, then, that Trump has no interest in actually eliminating student loans altogether. He may want to eliminate the Department of Education, but it's unclear what benefits that will have for regular Americans other than cutting overall government spending.

It's also unclear whether Trump will actually be able to get rid of the department, given that he not worked with Congress on any of his major initiatives thus far.

Trump, who has been known to make a promise or two that he couldn't actually keep, has never signaled that student debt might be eliminated, and the Supreme Court has made it quite clear that he couldn't even if he wanted to.

At the moment, then, it looks like student loans aren't going anywhere. And, even in the scenario where Trump is successful in closing down the Department of Education, that doesn't necessarily mean that they would disappear. Instead, Trump's plan is apparently to move them to another part of the government and continue collecting until every person who has taken a loan out has repaid it, or had it forgiven through another existing program.