Will Trump Try to End the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program?

Business|What Will Trump Do With the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program?

While President-elect Donald J. Trump had plenty to say during the presidential campaign about higher education institutions that were “infected” by the “radical left and Marxist maniacs,” he did not say much about his plans for the federal student loan system.

That hasn’t stopped New York Times readers — whose money questions we solicited in the wake of the presidential election — and others from worrying about the fate of one particularly complicated program: Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

The P.S.L.F. program, which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2007, cancels all remaining balances for federal student loan borrowers as long as they work in a qualifying public-service job and have made 120 monthly payments. They must meet other qualifications, too, and the rules have proved enormously confusing for both the entities that administer the program and the borrowers themselves.

Still, borrowers persist — lots of them. At the end of June 2023, according to the Education Department, just over two million borrowers had credit for at least some P.S.L.F.-eligible employment and also a positive loan balance. A lot is at stake for them (given that the average balance was $88,259) and the nation’s coffers (since there was just over $182 billion eligible for cancellation at the end of 2023, according to the Education Department).

Here are questions that borrowers have asked about P.S.L.F. and some experts’ attempts to answer them.

Will President-elect Trump end P.S.L.F.?

It’s a reasonable question, since he proposed doing so in his 2021 budget for the 2021 fiscal year.

At least three things would need to happen for Mr. Trump to end P.S.L.F. during his second term: He would have to want to do it. Congress would have to want to do it. Then, legislators would have to get it together to pass a bill.