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GAO-18-392R 1 (2018-04-17)

handle is hein.gao/gaobacpif0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAOU.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 April 17, 2018 The Honorable Mike Lee Vice Chairman Joint Economic Committee United States Senate The Honorable Bill Cassidy United States Senate The Honorable Tom Cotton United States Senate Higher Education: Characteristics of Graduate PLUS Borrowers To help students and their families pay for higher education, the Department of Education (Education) provides billions of dollars in federal student loans each year through programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended.1 As of September 2017, over 42 million borrowers held nearly $1.4 trillion in federal student loans. Graduate students have been eligible for Graduate PLUS (Grad PLUS) loans to help finance their education since July 1, 2006.2 Grad PLUS loans are not need-based and students can borrow up to the cost of attendance, such as tuition, fees, and room and board, minus any other estimated financial assistance.3 Grad PLUS loans are also different than many other federal student loans because they do not have fixed annual or aggregate-referred to in this report as lifetime-imits. Education currently offers a variety of repayment plans for federal student loan borrowers, including, among others, the Standard plan and several Income-Driven Repayment plans. Income-Driven Repayment is an umbrella term that describes a number of repayment plans available to eligible borrowers that primarily base payment amounts on a borrower's income, and extend repayment periods from the typical 10 years under the Standard plan to 20 or 25 years, with any remaining balance forgiven at the end of the loan repayment period. Since 2009, several Income-Driven Repayment plans have been made available to borrowers, and these 1Pub. L. No. 89-329, §§ 401-467, 79 Stat. 1219, 1232-1254 (codified as amended at 20 U.S.C. §§ 1070-1099d). 220 U.S.C. § 1078-2. The Graduate PLUS loan program was created by the Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2005, which modified a pre-existing program-the Parent PLUS loan-to include graduate students. See Pub. L. No. 109-171, § 8005(c), 120 Stat. 4, 158-59 (2006). 3Cost of attendance is an estimate of a student's educational expenses for one period of enrollment (such as an academic year). Cost of attendance includes, among other things, tuition and fees, books and supplies, room and board, transportation, and other miscellaneous personal expenses (e.g., the cost of purchasing a personal computer). See 20 U.S.C. § 108711. GAO-18-392R Graduate PLUS Loans Page 1

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