Savannah Britt owes about $27,000 on loans she took out to attend college at Rutgers University, a debt she hoped to see reduced by President Joe Biden. student loan forgiveness efforts.

Her payments are currently on hold while the courts rattle off challenges to the loan forgiveness program. But as the weeks tick by in Biden’s tenure, she could soon face a monthly payment of up to $250.

“With this the new administrationthe dream is gone. He’s shot,” said Britt, 30, who runs his own communications agency. “I had hope before Tuesday. I waited for the trial. Even my mother has a loan that she took out to support me. She owes about $18,000 and was in the process of being forgiven, but is at a standstill.”

President-elect Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have criticized Biden’s loan forgiveness efforts, and GOP-led state lawsuits have stalled plans for widespread debt cancellation. Trump has not said what he would do about the loan forgiveness, leaving millions of borrowers facing uncertainty about their personal finances.

The economy it was a major issue in the election, helping propel Trump to victory. But for borrowers, concerns about their finances extend beyond inflation to include student debt, said Persis Yu, managing counsel of the Student Borrower Protection Center.

“That’s a big part of what makes their lives unaffordable is this burden of expenses that they can’t seem to get out from under,” Yu said.

Student loan cancellation was not the focus of the campaign for either Trump or the vice president Kamala Harriswho avoided this issue at her political events. The issue only came up once in September’s presidential debate, when Trump hit Harris and Biden for failing to follow through on their promise of widespread pardons. Trump called it a “total disaster” that “made a mockery of young people.”

Biden promised the student loan cancellation program during his presidential run. Since its release, Biden’s loan forgiveness has faced relentless pushback from opponents who said it benefited the elites and came at the expense of those who paid back their loans or didn’t attend college.

Biden’s first plan to cancel up to $20,000 for millions of people was blocked by the Supreme Court last year. A the second plan, narrower it was stopped by a federal judge after Republican-led states sued. A separate policy aimed at reducing loan payments for troubled borrowers was halted by a judge, also after Republican-controlled states challenged it.

Bob Eitel, who served during the first Trump administration as a senior adviser to the secretary of education, said he expects the president-elect to reverse the loan cancellations.

“The Trump administration may pursue different avenues for loan relief, but it won’t be the kinds of mass forgiveness that the current administration has pursued,” said Eitel, president and co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies in Defense of Freedom.

Overall, Biden’s efforts have been relatively unpopular, even among those with student loans. Three in 10 US adults said they approved of Biden’s handling of student loan debt, according to a POLL this spring from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Four out of 10 disapproved. The others were neutral or didn’t know enough to say.

Project 2025, the plan for a hard right turn in the American government that it aligns with some of Trump’s prioritiescalls for getting the federal government out of the student loan business and eliminating repayment plans that predate the Biden administration.

Even without directly addressing student loans, Trump made promises that would affect them. He pledged to eliminate the US Department of Education, which manages the $1.6 trillion portfolio of federal student loans. It’s unclear which entity would assume that responsibility if the department were eliminated, which would require congressional approval.

“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him the mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver,” said Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.

Yu noted that the Biden administration was able to cancel student loans for approx 5 million debtorseven if the effort to forgive the signature was blocked. The administration did so by leaning toward loan cancellation programs already in place. For example, an existing student loan forgiveness program for public service workers has given aid to more than 1 million Americans, up from just 7,000 who were approved before it was updated by the Biden administration two years ago.

“A lot of the repeal that we’ve seen in the last two years has been because the Biden administration has committed to making the programs that are actually enshrined in law work for people,” Yu said.