Can the Trump administration make college cheaper?

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**Preston Cooper** (0:17)
This is Planet Money from NPR.

**Kenny Malone** (0:23)
The Trump administration is taking a new approach to a very sticky problem in the United States, that of student loan debt, all nearly $1.7 trillion of it. The Department of Education has a plan to bring down tuition costs beginning today, July 1st.
What is that plan? Well, Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently described it to lawmakers at a committee hearing on Capitol Hill.

**Linda McMahon** (0:48)
We want to bring down the cost of education.

**Kenny Malone** (0:51)
Yeah, so far, so good, following that. Then, she describes this big change to the federal program that loans students money for school.

**Linda McMahon** (0:59)
We've put in caps on programs for graduate students and undergraduate students to make sure that we can help reduce the cost and the burden of college.

**Kenny Malone** (1:10)
Yeah, actually, hold there for a second because that is the confusing bit for me. I believe she said to, quote, help reduce the burden of college. The plan is to give less money to student borrowers.

**Cory Turner** (1:26)
That's where I was really intrigued by their logic.

**Kenny Malone** (1:31)
This is Cory Turner, covers education for NPR. Every time I run into Cory at the NPR coffee machine, he will tell me something about some new thing happening in education. Then months later, the thing has exploded into a front page story. And that is why I listened to Cory recently when he told me to go check out Secretary McMahon's tuition fighting plan. So that plan basically is starting July 1st, if you want to get a graduate degree in most fields, the Department of Education, the biggest lender for student loans, is saying that they're only going to give you about $21,000 a year. That is the cap. If your tuition costs more than that, well, sorry. The Ed Department is not lending extra to cover it.

**Cory Turner** (2:15)
The administration's logic is based on this sort of old idea, and that is that if there's a lot of federal student aid floating around in the higher education marketplace, colleges have no incentive to lower their prices. So if they cap federal student loans specifically for graduate students, then the hope is colleges and universities all over the country will have no choice but to then lower their prices.

**Kenny Malone** (2:50)
I have many follow-up questions.

**Cory Turner** (2:54)
Yeah, so it sounds logical. The question is, is it actually true?

**Kenny Malone** (3:02)
Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Kenny Malone.

**Cory Turner** (3:04)
And I'm Cory Turner.

**Kenny Malone** (3:05)
And Cory, I believe you have now called basically anyone who had a hand in trying to study whether or not this proposal stands a chance to work.

**Cory Turner** (3:12)
That's right.

**Kenny Malone** (3:13)
Today on the show, Cory tells us what he's found and tells us the roots of this less money, less tuition problems. Is that what they're calling it?

**Cory Turner** (3:22)
Lower loans, lower prices? I don't know.

**Kenny Malone** (3:25)
It might need workshops. Whatever the name of this is, the roots of this particular solution.

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**Kenny Malone** (4:32)
So we're going to bring college prices down. That's what we're about to do today?

**Cory Turner** (4:36)
Yeah, I'm excited. College prices look out, you're going down.

**Kenny Malone** (4:40)
Today, we have invited NPR's Cory Turner over to our Planet Money House because big things that may affect you, that may affect your kids, your higher ed dreams, they are happening.

**Cory Turner** (4:51)
There's a consensus that there's a problem with the size of federal student loan debt in America. The question is, how do we fix the problem moving forward?