America’s education ecosystem is about to feel a seismic jolt—yet you’d never know it from the nightly news. On May 22 the House squeezed through HR 1 student aid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, by a single-vote margin (215–214), bundling hundreds of pages of tax, health-care and education provisions into a filibuster-proof reconciliation package now headed to the Senate for a vote as early as the week of July 1 ④.
Reconciliation bills matter because they need only 51 Senate votes—no bipartisan super-majority, no filibuster—making them a once-a-year legislative fast lane for changes that touch spending or revenue ⑤. Tucked inside the FY-2025 budget blueprint (H.Con.Res. 14), Title III of H.R. 1 rewrites federal student aid from top to bottom. If you care about Pell Grants, TRIO advisors, income-driven repayment or gainful-employment rules, the HR 1 student aid cuts may decide their fate.
Below is a high-level tour of HR 1 student aid cuts—an overture to a LinkedIn series that will dive, chapter by chapter, into how each provision remakes the Department of Education (ED) and the students it serves.
1. Student Aid Programs: A Vanishing Safety Net
| Program | Current FY 2025 Funding | Proposal for FY 2026 | Change | Who Loses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pell Grant (max award) | $7,395 | $7,395 | 0 % | No inflation adjustment; buying power erodes |
| Federal SEOG | $910 M | $0 | –100 % | Lowest-income Pell recipients lose up to $4 k/year |
| Federal Work-Study | $1.2 B | $220 M | –81 % | Campus jobs disappear, esp. at HBCUs & community colleges |
| TRIO Programs | $1.19 B | $0 | –100 % | First-gen & low-income advising gutted |
| GEAR UP | $388 M | $0 | –100 % | Early-college outreach ends |
Sources inside the House Education & Workforce Committee confirm that wiping out SEOG, TRIO, Work-Study and GEAR UP accounts for roughly $52 billion in ten-year savings ⑥. Pell is spared a cut—yet it also gets no inflation bump and new eligibility cliffs: students taking fewer than six credits or whose Student Aid Index exceeds twice the maximum award will lose access ⑦.
Why it matters: These grants are the scaffolding that keeps first-generation and low-income students enrolled. Stripping them shifts costs onto states and families already stretched thin.
2. HR 1 Student Aid Cuts to Federal Student Loans: From Safety Valve to Squeeze Box
Key loan changes
Subsidized Loans eliminated – All undergraduates will accrue interest while in school ⑧.
Grad PLUS abolished; Parent PLUS capped at $50k – Professional programs (medicine, law, MBA) face steep private-loan financing gaps.
Aggregate caps – Undergraduate borrowing limited to the median cost of a student’s program (roughly $50 k), graduate caps set between $100-150 k.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates these caps save $102 billion over a decade by shifting interest costs to borrowers ⑨.
Who’s hit hardest? Community-college students who borrow small amounts now face interest from day one; graduate students in high-ROI but high-cost fields (medicine, dentistry) may max out half-way through training.
3. Repayment & Forgiveness: Closing the Safety Valves
SAVE, REPAYE and PAYE → gone. All current income-driven plans close to new borrowers after July 1, 2026 ⑩.
New “RAP” plan – 1–10 % of discretionary income, 30-year term, unpaid interest forgiven monthly—but balances themselves can balloon.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness trimmed – Medical and dental residencies no longer count toward the 10-year clock.
Hardship/unemployment deferments erased for new loans—interest will tick even when you can’t find work.
Advocates warn the package “will make college inaccessible for millions,” particularly students of color who rely on IDR and PSLF ⑪.
4. Institutions & Oversight After HR1 Student Aid Cuts: Deregulate, Then Penalize
Risk-Sharing: Colleges will repay up to 20 % of unpaid principal after three years in default—an institution-level repayment obligation projected at $1.3 billion by 2034 ⑫.
Borrower-Defense & Gainful-Employment repealed: Career colleges escape debt-to-earnings tests; students lose collective discharge avenues.
Secretary of Education handcuffed: New rules that “raise loan costs” must get explicit congressional approval ⑬.
PROMISE Grants: A small carrot—competitive grants for schools that keep net-price low and completion rates high—but funded at just $200 M.
In effect, H.R. 1 axes most consumer-protection rules put in place since 2014, while introducing a fiscal back-stop that punishes institutions after students default rather than preventing bad programs up front.
5. The Bigger Picture: From Department Cuts to State Budgets
Higher ed is not the only casualty of HR 1 student aid cuts. Massive Medicaid and SNAP reductions elsewhere in the bill will squeeze state budgets; historically those gaps get filled by trimming public-college appropriations, driving tuition hikes ⑭. The cuts inside ED thus collide with funding cuts outside, amplifying harm for the same low-income students.
6. Why You Haven’t Heard More—and Why You Should Act Now
Reconciliation’s inside-baseball aura masks the stakes. Education trades are sounding alarms, but mainstream outlets have focused on the bill’s tax or border provisions. In the Senate, only one vote separates passage from failure. College presidents, scholarship foundations, student-loan advocates, and anyone who uses Pell or TRIO need to brief congressional delegations immediately.
7. What Comes Next in This Series
Over the next few weeks I’ll publish six follow-up posts:
The Pell Cliff: How new eligibility rules rewrite need analysis.
Life Without Work-Study: Campus employment’s quiet role in retention.
Risk-Sharing Reality: Will colleges raise tuition to pay default fines?
The Disappearing Safety Net: Modeling RAP vs. SAVE for a first-gen borrower.
States on the Hook: Medicaid cuts and the squeeze on public universities.
What Advocates Can Do Before the July 4 Vote.
Together, we’ll translate 300 pages of legislative text into concrete scenarios for students, families and institutions—and spotlight actions stakeholders can take before the Senate gavel falls.
If you believe information equity matters, share this post and bookmark the series. Silence, not opposition, is the bill’s greatest ally.
References
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “2025 Reconciliation Tracker,” May 22 2025.
Brookings Institution, “What Is Reconciliation in Congress?” February 2025.
Jessica Blake, “How House Lawmakers Could Reshape Higher Ed,” Inside Higher Ed, May 15 2025.
Katherine Knott, “What Trump’s Proposed Budget Cuts Mean for Education,” Inside Higher Ed, May 2 2025.
Congressional Budget Office, Estimated Budgetary Effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, May 20 2025.
Jessica Blake, “House Bill Calls for Risk-Sharing, Sweeping Changes to Student Loan Program,” Inside Higher Ed, April 29 2025.
Politico, “House Republicans Pass ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ After Weeks of Division,” May 22 2025.
Tanya I. Garcia, “A Looming Crisis for Public Colleges,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 25 2025.
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Education and the Workforce, Majority Staff. “Title III—Higher Education Act Reconciliation Recommendations: Section-by-Section Summary.” May 19, 2025. https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/titleiii_reconciliation_summary.pdf.
U.S. Congress. H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 119th Cong., 1st sess., engrossed in House May 22, 2025.
Congressional Budget Office. “Letter to the Hon. Virginia Foxx Re: Budgetary Effects of Student-Aid Provisions in H.R. 1.” May 20, 2025.
Student Borrower Protection Center. “After Senate Committee Hearing, One Dire Warning: Trump Policies Will Spike Higher Education Costs and Crush Families.” Press release, May 21, 2025.
House Budget Committee Democrats. “Republicans Jam the Middle Class with the Most Fiscally Irresponsible Bill in American History.” Fact sheet, April 8 2025.
Alexander, F. King, and Stephen Katsinas. “Public Higher Ed Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet: States Will Choose Medicaid over College Budgets if Federal Cuts Pass.” Inside Higher Ed, February 25, 2025.