How Will Graduate Student and Parent Borrowing Be Affected by New Federal Loan Limits?

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that became law this past July included significant changes affecting the way Americans will pay for higher education. Since 2006, both graduate students and the parents of dependent students have been able to borrow up to the full cost of attendance of their program of study—limited only by the cost of attendance that postsecondary institutions set—from the U.S. Department of Education’s PLUS loan programs.

One of the most consequential provisions in the OBBBA law, however, is the introduction of loan limits that cap both the annual and cumulative amounts that parents and graduate students will be able to borrow from the federal government, set to go into effect on July 1, 2026. Based on our analysis of recent borrowing levels, OBBBA’s new loan limits will curtail borrowing for about one-third of both all parent and all graduate student borrowers.

This brief note presents a high-level assessment, using publicly available survey data, of how parent borrowers and graduate students will see their eligibility for federal loans affected by these new rules. For the data tables included in this report, see Appendix A. For additional underlying data used in our analysis, see Appendix B. The PEER Center is also working on analyses of administrative data that enable more detailed field-, institution-, and program-specific estimates of impact, which will be published in a follow-up report.