The Republicans working on taking President Joe Biden\u2019s job all have said he was wrong to try\u00a0to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for a wide swath of U.S. borrowers.<\/p>\n
But while they all agree on the Democratic incumbent\u2019s forgiveness plan, which was blocked in June by the Supreme Court, they differ in their proposals for addressing student loans and the cost of higher education. That\u2019s as an estimated total of $1.7 trillion in student debt is held by more than 40 million Americans.<\/p>\n
MarketWatch\u2019s roundup below features the Republican White House hopefuls who qualified for their primary\u2019s third debate on Nov. 8 and haven\u2019t ended their 2024 campaigns, along with former President Donald Trump, the GOP race\u2019s frontrunner who again skipped debating his rivals. <\/p>\n
The candidates are listed in order of their ranking in\u00a0the latest national polls,\u00a0based on a RealClearPolitics moving average of surveys. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina isn\u2019t included because he suspended his presidential campaign on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Biden, meanwhile, has taken other actions aimed at providing relief to student borrowers. Officials launched a more generous repayment plan earlier this year that\u2019s drawn the ire of Congressional Republicans. His administration has also canceled $127 billion in student debt for 3.6 million borrowers. Officials are also in the process of taking another stab at mass student-debt relief. <\/p>\n
Trump is proposing to tackle college costs with an entirely new institution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If elected in 2024, Trump said he would usher in a \u201crevolution in higher education,\u201d by launching a free online college called the American Academy. The institution would \u201cmake a world-class education available to any American free of charge,\u201d Trump said in a campaign video.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The American Academy would award bachelor\u2019s degrees, and the federal government and its contractors would have to recognize its credentials, he said. Trump said he would fund the institution through taxes, fines and lawsuits levied on \u201cexcessively large private university endowments.\u201d <\/p>\n
Trump has shown a willingness to battle with traditional, wealthy higher education institutions in the past. The tax reform bill passed during his presidency included a provision taxing private university endowments with assets of at least $500,000 per student. His proposal for the American Academy also appears to get at culture-war criticism of college campuses coming from the right and other Republican leaders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is also vying for the GOP nomination.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe spend more money on higher education than any other country and yet, they\u2019re turning our students into communists and sympathizers of many, many different dimensions. We can\u2019t let this happen. It\u2019s time to offer something dramatically different,\u201d Trump said in the video.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump hasn\u2019t offered much insight on how he would approach student-loan policy if he was re-elected other than to praise his Supreme Court nominees for playing a role in knocking down Biden\u2019s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for a large swath of borrowers.\u00a0The Trump campaign didn\u2019t respond to MarketWatch\u2019s request for comment. <\/p>\n
Congressional Republicans have indicated they\u2019d like to strike down other aspects of Biden\u2019s student-loan agenda, including a new, more generous repayment plan. When Trump last occupied the White House, the Betsy DeVos-led Department of Education didn\u2019t shy away from walking back Obama-era policies aimed at helping student-loan borrowers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The student-debt proposals from DeSantis include pledging that he \u201cwill make universities, not taxpayers, responsible for the loans their students accrue\u201d \u2014 if the students\u2019 degrees don\u2019t set them up for career success. <\/p>\n
He will \u201cno longer incentivize useless degrees and courses with blanket government loans,\u201d said an economic plan that his campaign rolled out over the summer. The Florida governor\u2019s plan also said he will seek to allow student loans to be \u201cdischarged through bankruptcy like any other loan,\u201d\u00a0referring to how that\u00a0can be difficult to do today.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s wrong to say that a truck driver should have to pay off the debt of somebody who got a degree in gender studies,\u201d\u00a0DeSantis said in a speech during the summer. \u201cAt the same time, I have sympathy for some of these students because I think they were sold a bill of goods.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe universities should be responsible for the student debt. You produce somebody that can be successful, they pay off the loans \u2014 great. If you don\u2019t, then you\u2019re going to be on the hook,\u201d he also said in that speech.<\/p>\n
How could colleges be made to cover loans? GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who has endorsed DeSantis for president, introduced a bill this year that aims to impose an annual fine on universities that\u2019s tied to the amount of outstanding federal loans for which their students are not making on-time payments. That borrows from an approach that DeSantis proposed in 2017, when he was a congressman. <\/p>\n
The DeSantis campaign didn\u2019t respond to MarketWatch\u2019s request for comment<\/p>\n
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley\u2019s proposals tied to student loans include not having interest accrue while borrowers are still taking classes.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t put interest on a loan until after the person finishes their schooling, because if they borrow it their freshman year, they\u2019re already accruing more interest and it\u2019s getting bigger,\u201d said Haley in an interview with a TV station in New Hampshire, a key primary state.<\/p>\n
But the issue didn\u2019t figure prominently in a September speech that was billed as a major address about her economic plan. In that address, Haley, who served as Trump\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, criticized Biden\u2019s loan-forgiveness effort but otherwise didn\u2019t say much on the topic. Haley\u2019s campaign didn\u2019t respond to MarketWatch\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n
Like other Republican candidates, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has said he opposed Biden\u2019s mass student-debt cancellation plan, calling it \u201cregressive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The plan put the country in the position of\u00a0 \u201cnow effectively paying people more not to repay their student-loan debts than to actually reward people who did,\u201d Ramaswamy said. \u201cThat\u2019s not America.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad for the decision,\u201d he said of the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ramaswamy praised the court\u2019s decision not only because it struck down the student-debt forgiveness policy, but also because it would limit the power of executive agencies. The court\u2019s conservative majority ruled that in launching the policy, the Department of Education exceeded its executive authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ramaswamy has said that he would shut down the Department of Education, if elected. He\u2019s also described<\/a> the student-debt forgiveness that the Biden administration has pushed through (which is unrelated to the plan the court struck down) as a \u201cscam.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s also a symptom of what the U.S. Dept of Education does every day: tilting the scales in the wrong direction. That\u2019s why I will *shut it down,*\u201d he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, in August.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ramaswamy\u2019s campaign didn\u2019t provide comment, but pointed to previous statements he\u2019s made deriding<\/a> the Biden administration\u2019s approach to student debt and his plans to shut down<\/a> the Department of Education. <\/p>\n Over the course of his political career, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has accused colleges and universities of spending inappropriately, driving up costs for students and families.\u00a0<\/p>\n He reiterated this concern in November during a New Hampshire town hall. Christie argued there that the availability of federal student-loan dollars has provided room for colleges to raise their tuition. <\/p>\n \u201cWe need to set up a system of costs in this country where we say to these higher education institutions, you can raise your tuition and fees, your total costs, at the rate of inflation, but if you raise it any more we\u2019re going to take away your federal money,\u201d he said at the town hall. <\/p>\n Previously, Christie was also critical of the Biden administration\u2019s plan to cancel student debt en-masse. Shortly after Biden announced the plan in August 2022, Christie said it would encourage schools to raise tuition.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the town hall, Christie also floated the idea of using the threat of dinging a college\u2019s endowment in order to push them to keep costs for students and families low. <\/p>\n Many schools \u201chave enormous endowments, multi-billions of dollars in endowments, what are they doing with it?\u201d Christie asked the crowd. <\/p>\n \u201cMaybe the time has come to say your tuition goes up above the rate of inflation, not only do you not get federal money we\u2019re going to start taxing your endowments too.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n The Christie campaign didn\u2019t provide comment, but pointed to the former New Jersey governor\u2019s remarks in New Hampshire. <\/p>\n Now read:<\/strong> Here\u2019s how the Republican presidential candidates say they\u2019ll whip inflation<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nChris Christie<\/h2>\n