Paying for college

How and what Americans will pay for higher education is less certain than ever in 2017.

What little he has said about those issues has created some confusion. Trump has said he plans to cap all student loan payments at 12.5 percent of the borrower’s income and forgive the remaining balance after 15 years, which would cost the government billions. At the same time, he has said the government should no longer be in the lending business, making it seem that he’d prefer banks to handle the market. Giving banks a larger role in student lending could bar many low-income families from access to the credit needed to finance their children’s education.

It also remains unclear whether Trump, whose own for-profit education venture paid a multimillion-dollar legal settlement after the election, will end what some have deemed the persecution of for-profit colleges under the Obama administration. Shares of all the largest publicly traded for-profit college companies soared after Trump won. Conservative think tanks also suspect that the incoming administration will roll back consumer protections, such as broader debt forgiveness, for people who attended for-profit schools.

Still, it would be premature to assume that Trump will be a friend to colleges and universities of any kind. He has said that schools with large financial endowments should lose their tax-exempt status if they do not keep tuition low and reduce student debt, but his administration could ultimately yield to the demands of education lobbyists.

Whatever he does will have a tremendous impact on American families. And at this point, nobody knows what to expect.

This story was originally published January 3, 2017 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Paying for college."