The Fiscal Year 2020 Budget of the U.S. government continues to make clear the priorities of President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos — or, at the very least, that the priority is not education.

“The budget requests $62.0 billion for the Department of Education, an $8.5 billion or 12.0-percent decrease compared to the 2019 enacted level (including cancellations of Pell Grant unobligated balances). Excluding cancellations, the budget requests a program level of $64.0 billion for the Department of Education, a $7.1 billion or 10.0-percent decrease compared to the 2019 enacted level,” according to the budget proposal.

In several instances, the budget refers to fiscal discipline as a goal for the Department of Education in FY20, and the proposed cuts to education spending make it clear this goal takes priority. The budget looks similar to those proposed for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, moving to eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and make steep cuts to the National Institutes of Health and teacher development under Title II.

If history is any indication, this budget, like those of FY18 and FY19, will be rejected by Congress, signaling that Trump and Devos’s ideas about education are not in line with the rest of the country’s governing body. Although it’s encouraging Congress seems to have higher hopes for the U.S. education system, the proposed budget is a disappointing reminder of how education continues to slip in priority even though it should be among the country’s top concerns.

Especially worrying to college students is the budget’s proposed changes to student loan programs.

“The budget eliminates the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, establishes reforms to guarantee that all borrowers in [Income-Driven Repayment] pay an equitable share of their income and eliminates subsidized loans,” according to the budget. “To further improve and simplify loan repayment, the budget proposes auto-enrolling severely delinquent borrowers and instituting a process for borrowers to consent to share income data for multiple years.”

Subsidized loans are loans for undergraduate students awarded on the basis of financial need.

They are determined by students’ cost of attendance subtracted by projected family contribution and other forms of financial aid, like grants and scholarships. Subsidized Loans do not accrue interest while you are in school at least half-time or during deferment periods. As of 2018, 29.6 million people in the U.S. had subsidized loans, according to the Student Loan Hero website.

 

Additionally, there are currently 44.7 million people in the U.S. with outstanding student loan debt, with a 5.1 million borrowers in default and an 11.4 percent delinquency rate, according to Forbes website. With so many Americans in repayment for their loans struggling to even out the balance, as well as the high number of students who will take out loans in the future, these budget cuts pose a significant threat to people’s ability to pay for a college education.

 

“While the proposal clearly indicates priorities of the administration and streamlining the current loan programs may increase overall efficiency, a 12 percent budget cut for ED can considerably harm college students,” Xiaodan Hu, assistant professor of adult and higher education, said. “I am concerned that these proposed changes will penalize college students who already cannot afford higher education and further discourage them to attend or persist in college. For NIU, 47 percent of our students receive federal grants and 74 percent receive federal student loans — just imagine the number of college students that could be impacted by this budget cut in the nation.”

 

If this budget were to pass, it would not only make affordability more of an issue for those already planning on taking out loans to pay for college. It also poses the danger of dissuading potential students from pursuing a higher education, as the changes to student loan options may make the inevitable debt insurmountable.

 

Making college more affordable should be a top priority, but the budget proposal indicates that the current administration would rather focus its efforts on saving itself money, rather than making higher education more accessible for those who wish to pursue it. As college degrees become more and more necessary to find work and make a half-decent living, massive cuts to the education budget are a step in the wrong direction.

 

“Cuts to education are often motivated by short-sighted goals,”  Scot Schraufnagel, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, said. “The short-term economic advantages are off-set by longer-term losses associated with a workforce that is not properly trained and less productive.”