#pell grants

Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

President Donald Trump went after Ivy League schools with a vengeance straight out the gate during his second term, demanding hundreds of millions to settle sham investigations and restore federal funding. Those attacks, however, are about hurting schools that Trump and his supporters views as bastions of wokeism. But in a much quieter but more widespread way, the administration and Congress have engaged in an assault on the attainability of higher education for everyone but the rich. This is much bigger than budget cuts. It’s not merely a continuation of things like longtime GOP efforts to cut Pell Grants. It’s a far more wide-ranging assault designed to drastically limit access to higher education for lower-income and middle-class students.

Pricing out all but the rich and well-connected

One of the biggest obstacles that the administration has put in the way of prospective students is ensuring that student loan relief is essentially nonexistent and making repayment plans much more expensive. We’ve been dealing with this since before Trump retook office in 2025, as conservatives were incandescent with rage that people might see the tiniest shred of loan forgiveness.

Republicans in all three branches could not contain their enthusiasm at the prospect of foreclosing student loan relief. The judiciary? The right-wingers on the Supreme Court struck down former President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt. Congress? North Carolina GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the Education and the Workforce Committee, was so excited by this development that she literally titled her press release “Foxx Celebrates as SCOTUS Puts Final Nail in Biden’s Student Loan Bailout Coffin.” Executive branch? Trump’s Department of Education might have broken an arm patting itself on the back for killing the SAVE repayment plan, a move that will increase monthly student loan payments for millions.

Of course, eliminating student loan relief and most repayment options has the most direct effect on people who already have loans. However, it also serves as a deterrent to future students considering taking out loans, as they know the repayment landscape awaiting them is grim, especially if they don’t land a job in their field. But for many future students, taking out loans is a necessity, and without those loans, college isn’t in the cards. You can easily guess which groups rely the most on student loans and will be hurt by this going forward. Roughly half of all undergraduates take out some federal loans, but that spikes to 82.9 percent of Black students seeking a bachelor’s degree. Women are significantly more likely than men to take federal loans for both bachelor’s and associate’s degrees. Four years out from graduation, Black borrowers owe, on average, $25,000 more than their white counterparts. Now, a non-evil administration might look at this disparity and conclude it’s time to figure out how to close the racial gap so that Black borrowers aren’t disproportionately affected and can still access higher education. But this is the Trump administration. As far as Trump is concerned, it’s a feature, not a bug, if this move results in fewer women and fewer Black people going to college.

[...] But the administration didn’t just cap graduate loans at an amount too low to be sustainable for students who don’t have rich parents who could just write a check. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act created a two-tier system and narrowed what counts as a “professional” program. Would you like to go to graduate school to become a teacher, a nurse, or a social worker? Maybe you want to become an accountant or an architect? Train as a dental hygienist? Too bad, so sad. Those aren’t professional programs. Only 11 fields were deemed “professional” by the administration: chiropractic, clinical psychology, dentistry, law, medicine, pharmacy, podiatry, optometry, osteopathic medicine, theology, and veterinary medicine. The administration has a complicated, pointless, pretend rationale for all this, one which weirdly seems to revolve in part around whether your degree gets you some initials after your name. No matter the fake justification, you can see how this gets incoherent pretty quickly. A nurse isn’t a professional, but a chiropractor is? An accountant isn’t a professional, but a lawyer is? A clinical social worker isn’t a professional, but a clinical psychologist is? This isn’t just stupid. It’s short-sighted. Excluding most healthcare programs will just exacerbate the already existing shortage of trained healthcare workers, particularly in rural areas.

In some ways, this is regrettably a distinction without a difference, because even the professional caps are deliberately designed to be too low to cover professional education. The median cost for four years of medical school runs about $286,454 for public schools and $390,848 for private. The average law school tuition these days is about $46,000 per year, so a $50,000 loan cap doesn’t even begin to cover living expenses, even if it covers tuition. Over three-quarters of dental students graduate with at least $312,000 in student loan debt. The administration also eliminated Graduate PLUS, the loan program that let graduate students borrow up to their full tuition cost if they had already exhausted their unsubsidized federal loans.

The bill passed

The Biden-Harris administration pushed through a proposal to forgive a flat $10,000 of federal student loans to borrowers making less than 125k a year which was struck down by Republicans who took the issue to court and was ultimately struck down by the Conservative majority Supreme Court.

Even with the Supreme Court striking down the Biden-Harris administrations federal student loan forgiveness program, they were still able to use other executive means to forgive $190 billion dollars worth of student loans for over 5 million borrowers.

Seems like we are not seeing any type of federal student loan forgiveness pathway anytime soon.

the economy might feel distant, but growing public debt shapes the world you’re growing up in — here’s how, and what’s going on right now.

you’ve probably heard the phrase “budget deficit” tossed around in the news — especially during elections or when congress is fighting over government spending. but what does it actually mean? and more importantly, why should you care?

let’s break it down.

what is a budget deficit?

A budget deficit happens when the government spends more money than it brings in through taxes and revenue. To make up the difference, it borrows money — which adds to the national debt.

As of 2025, the U.S. national debt is over $34 trillion, and still growing.

what’s happening right now?

The U.S. just hit another debt ceiling debate. In early 2025, lawmakers debated whether to raise the debt ceiling (the legal limit on how much the U.S. can borrow). These political fights can threaten government shutdowns or credit downgrades, which shake the economy.

Rising interest rates are making debt more expensive. Because of efforts to control inflation, interest rates have gone up. That means the U.S. has to pay more just to cover interest on its debt — like only being able to pay the minimum on a giant credit card bill.

Spending cuts vs. program funding. Some lawmakers are pushing for cuts to education, environmental programs, or healthcare to reduce the deficit. Others argue for taxing the wealthy or big corporations instead. These choices directly affect you — especially if you rely on public schools, student aid, or health programs.

why should teens care?

It affects your college financial aid. Student loans and Pell Grants come from federal budgets. If spending shrinks, your options might too.

It impacts job opportunities. A weak economy or government spending freeze can reduce internships, youth employment programs, and local investment.

It shapes your future taxes. The more debt the government carries, the more future generations may be asked to pay — or accept cuts in services.

what you can do

Track budget news in plain English. Follow Instagram or TikTok accounts that explain politics simply (like @so.informed).

Ask where your local reps stand. Look up your representative’s views on youth spending, climate budgets, and student loans. You can email them directly or join a youth advocacy group that already is.

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