Former President Bill Clinton’s $17.6 million “honorary chancellor” position at a for-profit university could upset some young voters — many already struggling to tackle college debt — just as they head back to school, political observers said.

“The optics of it are undoubtedly bad,” said Erin O’Brien, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “Someone’s making $18 million while they’re trying to get their Pell Grants. It turns them off.”

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Clinton raked in nearly $18 million over five years at Laureate International Universities, whose founder, Doug Becker, hired the former president after Hillary Clinton arranged for him to attend a private State Department dinner on higher-education policy.

Bill Clinton’s lucrative payday from academia — not to mention the Clinton Foundation, which has raked in millions from colleges that paid top dollar for speeches from both Clintons over the years — comes as the Democratic nominee is trying to appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters by promising free tuition for income-eligible students.

“The remarkable part of this is the enormous amount of money paid to Bill Clinton, not just by Laureate but by others,” said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. “No former president has ever squeezed so much cash out of the status of his former office. It’s probably just me, but I long for the days of Harry Truman, who had little extra cash, yet turned down lucrative offers after his time in the White House because he thought it would sully the high office he had held. Those ethical days are gone forever.”

But Donald Trump is also reeling from his own questionable university dealings.

Yesterday, he tried to put to rest controversy over a $25,000 donation his foundation made to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s re-election campaign in 2013, just as she was considering whether to join a multistate lawsuit against Trump University.

A Trump spokeswoman insisted the two never discussed the suit, and a spokesman for Bondi, who is backing Trump’s White House run, said in June she personally solicited the donation from the billionaire.

But Hillary Clinton said there are “so many things that are questionable” about the donation and pointed to a $2,500 fine Trump eventually paid to the IRS.

Both candidates will take part in a Commander-in-Chief Forum hosted by Matt Lauer of NBC News tonight. It’ll be the first time in the general election that both Clinton and Trump will be at the same event — but they’ll be interviewed separately and take the stage at different times.