The Department of Education (ED) just took a big step closer to shutting down.The Trump administration announced on Thursday an interagency agreement between the ED and the Treasury to move student lending operations to the Treasury, which will “assume operational responsibility for collecting on defaulted Federal student loan debt and provide operational support to ED’s efforts to return borrowers to repayment,” the ED said in a release. “I think we’ve been very clear about this last week that this is a multiphase process,” Nicholas Kent, Undersecretary of Education, told Fox News Digital on Monday.DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO PULL BACK RACE-BASED CRITERIA IN FEDERAL GRANTSThroughout the 2024 campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to eliminate the Department of Education and signed an executive order directing his administration to start disbanding it. “The Secretary has been on the record saying that these interagency agreements are proof of concept, that we want to show Congress, that we want to show families, we want to show moms and dads and families that the Department of Education does not need to be here for federal grant aid and federal student loans to continue flowing to borrowers,” Kent said.Andrew Gillen of the Cato Institute told Fox News Digital that this particular shift in responsibilities is significant because previous interagency agreements have been “relatively small.””Whereas this student loan move–this is the biggest staffing and the biggest budgetary component of the Department of Education. So, if it’s sent over to Treasury, this really does indicate that this is moving a substantial…
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