☰
× Close

Projects

Shifting Burdens: How PLUS Loan Changes Impact Public Postsecondary Institutions

Summary

Recent changes to the federal PLUS loan program include eliminating the Graduate PLUS program for most graduate students and imposing borrowing caps on parents borrowing PLUS for their dependent students. These changes are expected to have significant impacts on students; however, the impacts on state higher education systems and agencies that support public institutions have not yet been examined.

This project aims to fill that gap by analyzing how these federal policy changes are likely to affect state higher education systems, with particular attention to implications for public postsecondary institutions and the state agencies that support them. As these changes are implemented, state policy leaders will need support in navigating the implications, which could include decreased campus-level tuition revenue, increased basic-needs challenges for students, and a growing private market for education financing options, among other possibilities. NCHEMS will support state policy leaders by translating these national policy changes into state-level insights, equipping state higher education leaders with the knowledge and frameworks needed to protect student access, institutional stability, and the long-term health of their postsecondary education systems.

Topics Approach

Topics

• Federal PLUS loan policy changes — overview of the elimination of Graduate PLUS and Parent PLUS borrowing caps.
• State system-level analysis — downstream effects on state higher education systems and the agencies that support public institutions.
• State policy response options — frameworks and strategies for state leaders to navigate and respond to federal policy changes.

Approach

This project will involve two analytical strategies.

  1. The first is a national, baseline scan that will categorize institutions and states by their level of exposure to the PLUS loan changes. NCHEMS will identify and implement a strategy to determine how PLUS loans contribute to institutional tuition revenue and to assess the potential implications that students and programs will face with the reduced scope of these programs. To achieve this, we will categorize institutions by their exposure to the elimination of Graduate PLUS and the reduction in Parent PLUS borrowing caps. We will estimate exposure levels by examining data from IPEDS, NPSAS, FSA, the College Scorecard, and other publicly available sources. Using these data, we will employ descriptive statistics, as well as correlation and regression techniques, to assess the extent to which variables such as graduate student enrollment, PLUS loan volume, degrees awarded by field, and undergraduate enrollment levels move together. With these categories, we intend to match tuition pricing information to estimate the extent to which PLUS loans have historically supported institutional tuition expenses and other components of the student’s cost of attendance. NCHEMS would then create a table to show these potential impacts by state. NCHEMS would also produce a short-form policy brief that explains the scope of the changes’ impact and recommends responses for state policy leaders and policymakers to consider.
  2. The second strategy would provide a more in-depth focus on a few states through profiles of three to four selected states. The state profiles would be intended for a SHEEO- or system-level audience, as well as their state legislators, as interest and awareness exist. The profiles would contain information on the projected impacts on their institutions, along with contextualized recommendations based on the state’s governance structure for higher education and its overall state financial aid policy architecture.