Note that levels of student loan debt vary across states, presumably due to difference in state policies regarding in-state tuition and financial aid at the state schools.
You can click on a state to see student loan debt levels for each school, and percentage of graduates with debt. For example, graduates of the PA flagship are more likely to be in debt than graduates of the CA flagship, and the amount of debt carried by graduates of the PA flagship is more than twice the amount of debt carried by graduates of the CA flagship.
In other words, “borrowing more than they should” may depend on which state they live in.
The big exception is that divorced parents who are still fighting their divorces tend to be a complicating factor at many of those highly resourced privates that require both divorced parents’ finances. Given how common this divorced parents situation is (about a third of kids will see their parents divorce before they reach adulthood), it may not be much of an outlier.
I think it is better to become a doctor and have loans, than to not have the opportunity at all because of the new loan limits.
That is the issue, and it is not fair to students from families of lesser means. It will also add to less diversity in medical fields, which is a huge problem.
When I worked at a large public university, the students who borrowed the most (based on my experience of processing Grad PLUS loans and reviewing loan increase requests) were the Masters of Social Work students. These students don’t have high paying jobs when they graduate, for the most part. But … we really need these graduates, and we need MORE of them. So what are we, as a society, doing to address this issue? Cutting off the ability for these students to borrow federal loans is a reaction, not a plan. And we have fewer family doctors because these students pay a lot of money to earn a degree but earn less than students who go into other specialties. Like MSW grads, we need family physicians. At what point will we stop reacting and begin the more difficult process of determining what benefits society & how we can help students fill our needs?
Absolutely, and as a PA resident, I think this is properly an indictment of my state’s policies on higher education.
I also agree with that, but I would suggest that is a different sort of issue in kind from the family not having enough financial resources at all.
In divorce cases like that, collectively the two parents still need to have an outlier combination of financial resources in order for the kid to not qualify for any aid. However, if one of the parents is willing to pay their share of what the college expects, and the other parent is not, that can mean the parent willing to pay either has to contribute much more than their expected share, or the kid has to choose another college.
I understand that can be very hard for the parent willing to pay and the kid. But I also understand colleges have no real choice in this matter. Because need aid can’t be as easy to trigger as a parent simply saying they don’t want to pay as much as they realistically could.
However, if they would qualify for financial aid, but are uncooperative with the financial aid forms, their kid gets nothing that depends on those financial aid forms.
The other issue with divorced parents is that, combined, the two parents are likely to have less money available for their kid’s college than if they were still together. First, they probably funded their divorce lawyers’ kids’ college funds during their divorce. Second, living in separate households typically costs more than both of them sharing a household. So, even if they were cooperative in funding their kid’s college, they are less likely to have the money.
Again, absolutely. Divorce scenarios can be seriously bad for the kid in multiple ways when it comes to paying for these colleges.
So the way the CSS Profile standard methodology works, there is a sort of standard deduction applied to both parental income and parental assets, and my understanding is when the student has both a custodial parent and noncustodial parent, they do get the benefit of two such deductions, one for each parent. In general, the whole system is set up to calculate a contribution for each parent separately.
Of course it is true that divorces can deplete assets, but that should be reflected in fewer assessable parental assets.
It’s up to the CSS school to decide how much aid it will award the student. The FAFSA formula has changed for divorced families as now the parent who supplies the most support fills out the FAFSA so the student could get less in federal grants, but otherwise gets the same loan amounts (the $27k total).
When I filled out the FAFSA, there was a huge difference in the asset allowance for a single parent household and a married family household. IIRC, with the same income (total) I got a $14k allowance and if I were married it would have been $60k. Tuition was the same for a student of an unmarried parent or a married one.
Changes are made to FAFSA all the time. The loan amounts for undergrads are the same as they’ve been for years. It seems most of these changes are for graduate and professional schools.
One hack my nephews have used is to finish their undergrad degrees and not graduate but go directly to grad school (has to be at same school, of course). They get to keep paying undergrad tuition and borrow under the undergrad rates if they still have room in their undergrad total loan amount. Graduate with undergrad and masters at the same time.
Nephew #1’s (CU)encouraged it! It was the engineering department that suggested that route to him. He then told nephew #2 (Colo School of Mines) and he’s currently entering his senior year and will do it too. Both are state publics, and tuition for an ungrad is less than for grad students. Nephew #2 has quite of bit of grant money so those funds will continue too if he stays an undergrad (Pell grant, Colo supplement for instate tuition, school grants). For '26-27, instate undergrad engineering tuition @CU is $19k/yr and masters is $25k, so it saves about $6k to remain an undergrad.
I’m just saying the schools are getting creative in helping students get those masters degrees in a less expensive way. I don’t think anyone wants to see students borrowing more than they have to to meet their goals and especially since fed grad loans are either going away or expensive.
We can have opinions on whether the loan cuts are good or bad, and the schools can petition to go back to old rules, but the students are caught in the middle. This is one solution for SOME students. I hope there are more hacks students can find (corporate sponsorship of degrees, state loan programs, schools giving more aid).
That’s right. There is something called the Institutional Methodology that sort of sets the defaults for CSS schools, but they can modify that however they like.
I think it is sometimes useful to understand the basics of the IM, but really you just have to check NPCs, and even then wait to get your actual offer to be sure.
FAFSA no longer has asset protection allowances. The base CSS profile does, although schools may differ in what they actually use in their institutional aid formula with respect to asset protection allowances.
I know. That’s why I said FAFSA changes all the time. I think the biggest changes have been to the allowance for multiple siblings in school at the same time and which parent (if divorced) has to file. It is a ‘one size fits all’ formula and we all know that one size doesn’t fit all.
These changes were made by the federal government in an effort to simplify the FAFSA. They were rolled out over a couple years, making it seem more hodgepodge than it actually was (due to the way rulemaking works). They are based on data, and the point is to focus on the poorest families - the data shows that the changes that were made make the FAFSA easier to complete while they do not negatively impact Pell eligible students … yes, they do negatively impact some Pell eligible students, but policy changes are intended to benefit “most.” Pell is the reason for the FAFSA - the government is less concerned about the relatively small subsidized loan amounts that are impacted by FAFSA changes, because these are loans. I understand that the changes negatively impact some students. The biggest complaint I hear has to do with students not getting as much institutional aid. It’s important to understand that while schools may use FAFSA to award institutional aid, it is not the purpose of the FAFSA to consider this (schools can collect their own information and calculate eligibility for institutional aid using their own formulas). Unfortunately, there is no single formula that will please everyone.