Federal student loan system is turning into a blockbuster comedy of errors! Picture this: President Trump, with a flourish of his executive pen, decides it’s time to yeet the Department of Education into the abyss and hand over the $1.6 trillion student loan circus to… wait for it… private companies!
Because nothing screams “affordable education” like a for-profit bank eyeing your student debt like a kid in a candy store.
Borrowers, already juggling payments like clowns on unicycles, are now watching the Biden-era SAVE plan—aka the “please don’t make me eat ramen forever” program—sit in legal limbo, frozen like a deer in headlights.
Meanwhile, Trump’s team has pulled the plug on the income-driven repayment system faster than you can say “forbearance,” leaving eight million borrowers twiddling their thumbs and praying their loan servicers don’t send them a bill for their firstborn child.
Advocates are sounding the alarm louder than a foghorn at a silent retreat, warning that shutting down the Department of Education is like tossing a match into a dumpster fire. Trump’s big idea? Privatize it!
Because if Wells Fargo—with its army of 200,000 employees—can handle your checking account, surely they can manage your soul-crushing student debt, right?
Never mind that the Office of Federal Student Aid is limping along with fewer staff than a gas station on a holiday weekend after mass layoffs turned it into a ghost town.
Legal experts are popping in like the nerdy kid with glasses in a teen movie to remind everyone that Trump can’t just snap his fingers and Thanos the department away—Congress has to sign off, and they’re about as likely to agree on this as they are to share a pizza.
So, the executive order’s got more loopholes than a pirate’s alibi, with phrases like “to the maximum extent permitted by law” basically winking and saying, “Yeah, we know we can’t really do this.”
Borrowers, meanwhile, are caught in a slapstick nightmare: applications shut down, payments soaring, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness dangling just out of reach like a carrot on a stick.
Labor unions and state attorneys general are suing faster than you can say “class action,” while the White House insists, “No worries, we’ve got this!”—all while the department’s workforce is shrinking faster than a cheap sweater in the wash.
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