President Trump has declared that he has “won affordability.” In his State of the Union speech, he even bragged that he’s bringing costs “way down on health care and everything else.“
In reality, the Trump administration is making it much harder for working families to both meet their daily needs – and to fulfill their long-term dreams of higher education.
The Republican tax and spending plan adopted last year — the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” — includes huge tax giveaways to the rich, paid for with deep cuts to programs for working people. The Congressional Budget Office expects 7.5 million Americans to lose their Medicaid insurance and 4 million to lose some or all of their SNAP food aid benefits.
Slashing these public assistance programs will make it even harder for working families to save money for college. In fact, the same tax law also includes an overhaul of critical federal student aid programs that will destroy many young people’s dreams of pursuing higher education — again, all to finance tax breaks for corporations and the rich.
This problem is not abstract to me. It’s personal. I am a first-generation college student and now a doctoral student. My hard-working Black family and my broader community poured everything they had into me because they believed — against every obstacle — that education could be my ladder up.
Federal student aid programs like Pell Grants and the Grad Plus subsidized loan program helped me as I struggled up that ladder. It still wasn’t easy. I worked two part-time jobs and still could barely make ends meet. But without that help, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Now, the aid programs that I’ve depended on are under attack. Students are facing tighter borrowing limits and dramatically reduced repayment options, making it even more difficult to get out from under heavy debts. Under the new borrowing caps, the government plans to slash about $44 billion in aid over the next 10 years, affecting roughly 25 percent to 40 percent of graduate borrowers.
Making matters worse, the Pell Grant program, which helps more than six million low-income students a year pay for college, is facing a potential shortfall crisis. If Congress doesn’t put in new funds, the program’s deficit will skyrocket to $11.5 billion in 2027, and those grants could very well dry up.
Across the country, families who believed education was their way forward are feeling their dreams fade away. I’ve spoken to aspiring and current graduate students who are unsure if staying in school is still an option. I’ve talked to borrowers who fear they will live the rest of their lives crushed by student debt and parents who are worried they’ll never be able to afford to send their babies to college.
President Trump didn’t even mention student aid in his State of the Union address. But this issue is central to the health of our union. It’s about whether we as a nation believe working families deserve opportunity — or just survival. It’s about whether we as a nation value the futures of our young people — or only the futures of billionaires.
Higher education was supposed to be the great equalizer. But if we continue to shortchange student aid, working families will see it as either a hopeless fantasy or a life-long debt sentence.
