In a move that could have disproportionate impacts on Black students and families, the Trump administration announced this month that it will relocate certain responsibilities out of the U.S. Department of Education in an effort to strip the agency of much of its authority.

This includes plans to transfer several key programs — including those that support low-income districts and historically Black colleges and universities — to other federal departments. 

Officials said in a Nov. 18 press release that the department signed agreements with other federal agencies “to break up the federal education bureaucracy.” 

These developments have thrown student loan borrowers into a state of confusion. For months, there’s been speculation about the future of the agency that determines how the federal government’s education budget is spent and how civil rights protections for students are interpreted, and there’s still no clarity in sight.

This upheaval raises major concerns for Black borrowers, who not only owe a disproportionate amount of the national student loan debt, but also, compared with their white counterparts, are more likely to struggle to pay back their loans.

The news immediately drew backlash from education advocates.

“Ensuring a brighter future for our children should be a top priority for any administration, but this administration is taking every chance it can to hack away at the very protections and services our students need,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, in a statement.

“Now, they’re neglecting the basic responsibility to educate our children,” she wrote. “It’s cruel. It’s shameful. And our students deserve so much better.”

Agency workers have also criticized the administration’s efforts to hand off some responsibilities to other departments.

“The Department of Education is a fairly awful place to work right now,” one employee told the Guardian. “But what is being done to the systems that support kids, students, families, adult learners, and our country’s future is worse than anything they can do to us.”

The relocation announcement follows the U.S. Supreme Court justices’ ruling that allowed mass firings at the agency to continue in July.

The agency described the new agreements between the Education Department and four other agencies — the Departments of Labor, State, Interior, and Health and Human Services — as a way to “return education to the states.”

Read on to learn more about the administration’s latest move and the implications of the larger overhaul of the department.

How do the changes involve Black students?

A number of the programs that will be moved out of the Education Department affect Black students. These include Title I, which provides approximately $20 billion in yearly funding to low-income districts, and Title III, which supports and strengthens HBCUs. Both will be relocated to the Department of Labor.

It’s unclear what the timeline for these changes will be, but experts worry about how such significant shifts might affect the flow of services to students and families.

In a social media post, Angela Hanks, chief of policy programs at the Century Foundation and a former employee at the Labor Department under the Biden administration, said that the changes are “nonsensical.”

“Putting some of the largest ED K-12 functions within the Department of Labor is like having a frog carry a camel on its back,” she wrote. “Trump and his allies aren’t returning education to the states or taming bureaucracy, they’re laying a bureaucratic mess at the feet of states and district leaders.”

Hanks added, “States, districts, and principals now have to worry whether potential disruptions in federal funding will mean they can’t hire teachers, invest in curriculum, or provide student supports. They will experience this as chaos, not empowerment.”

What other actions is the administration taking?

Under Trump’s influence, the department has announced that it plans to “reassess” and potentially restrict borrower-defense regulations. Introduced in 1995, these regulations have allowed borrowers who have been defrauded or intentionally misled by their schools to be released from their debt.

When Joe Biden was in the White House, he forgave around $30 billion in debt for 1.7 million borrowers under the Borrower Defense to Repayment program. This was a boon to Black students, who are disproportionately targeted by for-profit and predatory institutions.

Additionally, layoffs have upended the department, as they have large swaths of the federal government, and the Trump administration has ramped up its targeting of racial equality by threatening universities’ federal funding.

Ivory Toldson, a professor of counseling psychology at Howard University, has long been concerned about the higher education marketplace, which he argues incentivizes students to prioritize a college’s reputation over its cost. He said that this tendency can plunge students into extraordinary debt.

But the administration, he said, appears to be more interested in destabilizing this marketplace, not improving it or helping students to navigate it.

“A lot of what Trump is doing is regressive. It’s not consistent with what students or schools need,” Toldson, who was the director of education for the NAACP, told Capital B.

“The term ‘DEI’ stands for ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’” he said. “If you’re against diversity, that means you want white spaces. If you’re against equity, that means you want inequitable spaces. And if you’re against inclusion, that means you want to exclude.”

He surmised that if Black students feel less protected at predominantly white institutions, they might start to look for more welcoming environments, including historically Black colleges and universities, which tend to be cheaper tuition-wise.

What might happen to income-driven repayment plans?

Several IDR plans have been introduced under a number of different administrations.

Both the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) plan and the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) plan were created under President Barack Obama. The Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan came about during the President George W. Bush era. And the Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) plan was established under President Bill Clinton.

The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which lowered monthly payments for millions of borrowers and sped up the pace of loan forgiveness for many others, replaced REPAYE, and it was Biden’s contribution to the landscape.

But the current outlook is challenging, Stanley Tate, an attorney specializing in student loan law, told Capital B. A U.S. appeals court in February blocked the SAVE plan and ended the 0% interest forbearance.

The administration is encouraging borrowers to switch to a plan that it’s approved. One of the suggested routes is the IBR program. The department also temporarily paused forgiveness through the program.

Starting July 1, 2026, new borrowers have to pick between two options. One is a standard plan that gives borrowers 10 and 25 years to repay their loans using a fixed monthly payment, and the other is the Repayment Assistance Plan, which allows borrowers to use between 1% and 10% of their discretionary income for monthly payments.

Current borrowers have until July 1, 2028, to switch to a new option. By ending the 0% interest forbearance, the administration hopes borrowers will switch sooner rather than later.

Student loan experts note that, if borrowers switch plans, they should expect their monthly payments to increase, since the SAVE plan was the most affordable option available — some low-income borrowers paid $0 a month.

There’s a silver lining, however.

“IBR was established by a congressional act,” Tate said, “and as a result, it’s likely to remain stable unless explicitly overturned by Congress — a scenario I don’t see as probable.”

How can borrowers make decisions that protect their credit?

Borrowers must make strategic decisions based on their individual circumstances, Tate explained. 

For some, this might mean sticking with their current plan and waiting to see how SAVE litigation plays out. Others, particularly those who are closer to securing loan forgiveness, might benefit from switching to the IBR plan. Still others might choose to exit the federal loan system entirely by paying off their loans.

“What I strongly caution against is the notion of simply abandoning payments altogether,” Tate explained. “The Department of Education has extraordinary collection powers that can make this strategy extremely costly in the long run. It can garnish wages, seize tax refunds, and take Social Security benefits — all without obtaining a court order. These collection tools are far more powerful than what private creditors have at their disposal.”

Failing to pay loans, or paying them late, also can hurt borrowers’ credit scores.

The key, Tate added, is making informed decisions based on your current situation while also staying prepared for potential changes in the system.

Past moves to eliminate the department

Trump’s attempts to shutter the department might be the most significant in recent years, but he isn’t the first Republican leader to make this effort.

Ronald Reagan was determined to extinguish the department when he entered the White House in 1981, at the height of an era marked by attacks on the Civil Rights Movement and other liberation struggles.

“The budget plan I submit to you on Feb. 8 will realize major savings by dismantling the Department of Education,” he said in his 1982 State of the Union address.

But Reagan ran into opposition from Democrats in Congress. Eventually, he abandoned his plans for the department.

“I have no intention of recommending the abolition of the department to the Congress at this time,” he said in a 1985 letter to Republican Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah.

“I have previously recommended the abolition of the Department of Education,” Reagan explained. “This was because I believed that federal educational programs could be administered effectively without a Cabinet-level agency. While I still feel that this is the best approach, that proposal has received very little support in the Congress.”

To avoid some of the policy challenges Reagan faced, Bush, years later, decided not to eradicate the department. Instead, he opted to demand more from educators, signing into law the No Child Left Behind Act, intended to overhaul schools that were considered to be “failing,” according to standardized test scores.

Trump’s efforts not only continue Reagan’s agenda but accelerate it, with potentially detrimental consequences for Black communities.

“I think that the house of cards is going to fall,” said Toldson, the Howard professor, referring to the instability the administration is injecting into the education landscape. “It’s just a matter of when and where.”

What happens next?

On the campaign trail, Trump frequently railed against the department, claiming that it was run by “radicals, zealots, and Marxists” and promising to shutter it.

But it’s uncertain how he would do that. Closing a federal agency requires an act of Congress, and such legislation isn’t likely to get the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster in the U.S. Senate and advance to a final vote.

Still, the administration’s assault on the department, which Congress created in 1979, has generated alarm among its employees, both past and present.

Under the Obama administration, Tyra Mariani, the founder and principal of the consulting firm UP Advisors LLC, was appointed chief of staff to the U.S. deputy secretary of education and deputy chief of staff to the U.S. secretary of education, helping to shape priorities across different levels of schooling.

She previously told Capital B that it’s “extremely heartbreaking” to watch Trump attack an agency designed to ensure that every young person, especially those from Black communities, has access to a quality education.

“It’s hard,” Mariani said. “You’re looking at your communities, and you know that Black and brown communities will be most affected by all of this undoing.”

This story has been updated.