Grad Students Face Costly Private Loans After Federal Cuts

Angel Whisenant, a US Army veteran and mother of three in Virginia, must earn a master’s degree to achieve her dream of becoming a teacher. But Whisenant, 41, is running into a roadblock: She won’t be able to borrow the tens of thousands of dollars from the federal government she’ll need to pay for her program.

Until now, the US Department of Education has let students borrow up to the full cost of graduate school attendance, which can total hundreds of thousands of dollars including room and board. Last year, Republicans in Congress abolished the popular GradPlus program for students and restricted ParentPlus loans for their parents, limiting all graduate lending to $20,500 per year for most degrees and $50,000 for professional programs such as medicine, law, theology and clinical psychology.