May 21, 2025 | WASHINGTON, D.C. — Moments ago, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) concluded its hearing on the state of higher education. Mike Pierce, executive director of Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) and former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regulator, testified before the Committee about the looming economic harm facing 21 million Americans as a result of President Trump and Secretary McMahon’s actions on student loans.
From Pierce’s oral testimony:
“Rather than check the abuses of the executive branch, Congressional Republicans appear ready to abuse the reconciliation process to rewrite higher education policy—shrinking access to federal financial aid, cutting or eliminating grants for about two-thirds of Pell recipients, removing guardrails that protect students from predatory schools, and placing enormous pressure on state higher education budgets.
“The result will push millions of families into the private loan market and, in the same bill, gut the CFPB—the regulator charged with protecting these very same families.”
Also from his testimony:
“There remains strong, bipartisan agreement that the student loan system is broken. America’s grand experiment with debt-financed higher education has failed.
“While we disagree on what comes next, one thing is clear: Our government should focus on making markers of middle-class American life—including education—cheaper for students and families. Instead, families are facing extraordinary uncertainty, as reckless executive actions and radical legislation push the American Dream beyond reach.
“…We deserve to live in a country where public college is free and there is no student debt; where higher education is an engine of upward mobility and no one is forced to forgo their dreams because they cannot afford the rising costs of a college degree.”
Read Pierce’s full written testimony here.
Read SBPC’s new blog with The Century Foundation on how private lenders stand to benefit from House Republicans’ reconciliation bill: Private Lenders Would Cash In on Congress’s Student Loan Changes
###
About Student Borrower Protection Center
Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) is a nonprofit organization focused on eliminating the burden of student debt for millions of Americans. We engage in advocacy, policymaking, and litigation strategy to rein in industry abuses, protect borrowers’ rights, and advance racial and economic justice.
Learn more at protectborrowers.org or follow SBPC on Twitter @theSBPC.