The Trump administration has convened a panel of experts to decide how the president’s executive order will curb exemptions from public service loans. The three-day lecture ended without any resolution.
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WASHINGTON – A group of 10 from the U.S. Department of Education was able to make a big decision before the July 4 holiday.
After three days of hard work negotiations, the fate of a major student loan repayment program was in their hands. Ultimately, a panel of lobbyists, former students, university administrators and experts could not agree to a path forward.
The thousands of borrowers currently employed in jobs where the country relies on functions are waiting for more uncertainty.
A public service loan exemption, or program under scrutiny, called PSLF, allows Americans in public service careers (such as nurses, firefighters, and some non-profit occupations) to cancel student debt after a decade of hourly payments.
Congress approved the program in 2007 with bipartisan support, and former President George W. Bush signed it into law. More than a million people have been allowed tens of thousands of dollars in loans following the reforms made by former President Joe Biden.
The PSLF was recovering from what student loan experts and Democrats described as years of fraud management, so President Donald Trump turned to change it. In March he signed an executive order suggesting that certain employers disqualify workers from being eligible to not benefit from the program.
The type of work Trump wanted to put on the chopping block was not clear exactly. However, he emphasized that organizations with “substantially illegal purposes” are in trouble.
Based on language in his order, the university’s affordable advocates began to fear chasing employers who support gender-affirming minors’ gender-affirming care and undocumented immigrants and Palestinian rights.
Borrowers are worried that their occupation will no longer qualify for PSLF, and they are forced to switch jobs or live longer with debts that the government has promised to cancel.
The borrower is worried that he was “left in lurch”
The Education Department convened a panel of experts in the first week of July to help ploy regulatory ploys to implement Trump’s orders. If they reach a consensus, their recommendations will likely be set on stones.
But they didn’t. Betsy Mayott, president of the Student Loan Advisor Institute, a nonprofit that provides free advice on repayments to borrowers, was the only hold on hold in the final vote.
She told USA Today about her decision, “I’m really on the fence.” Ultimately, she decided she could not vote for a proposal empowered by the Department of Education that she and other advocates believe they did not have legally.
“For me, it is very doubtful that the Department of Education has the ability to remove PSLF-qualified status from government employers or 501(c)(3),” she said, referring to tax codes for some organizations’ status. “That alone was a big problem for me.”
Mayotte and other policy experts spent several days drafting ways to limit the scope of Trump’s executive order. Among their proposals was a process in which one of the roughly 2 million PSLF-qualified employers in the United States could appeal efforts to target them. The panel also proposed new “severe and broad” standards that could provide another guardrail to protect employers from political pressure.
Although it is not guaranteed, it is still possible for these ideas to make it into the final regulations.
No matter what the education department decides, it should open up protection for the hundreds of thousands of people already registered with the PSLF, said Alyssa Dobson, the university’s financial aid manager who worked for the panel with Mayotte.
“They are making life decisions based on something they really believe is available,” she said in an interview. “And that’s just pulling out from under them. In my opinion, that’s not right.”
In a statement, James Bergeron, an actor under the education secretary, said the committee failed to reach a consensus but “helped fulfill one of President Trump’s promises to ensure that the PSLF does not subsidize organizations that violate the law.”
I want forgiveness of the loan
Among the many borrowers concerned about the future of PSLF is Maryland researcher Tracey Blake. She and her husband have over $240,000 in student debt, but if her employer is still eligible to provide it, she is only two years away from getting loan forgiveness through PSLF.
“I’m afraid the rug will be pulled out from under me,” she said in the public comments section of the meeting to discuss the new regulations. “It’s unfair to choose who gets forgiveness and chooses and leaves a family like me in the worst.”
Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA Today. You can contact him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @Zachschermele and follow Bluesky at @Zachschermele.bsky.social.
