Free Money for Graduate Students Won’t Go Unnoticed

Last year, we demonstrated in painstaking detail that the Obama administration’s new Income-Based Repayment (new IBR) program for federal student loans, known as Pay-As-You-Earn, will be a boon to graduate students and the schools that enroll them. Because graduate students can take out federal student loans to pay for the full costs of their educations (including living expenses) using the Grad PLUS program, even students who go on to earn six-figure incomes will qualify for low payments under IBR and have substantial debt forgiven after 20 years.

Some observers might dismiss those warnings, arguing that such outcomes are outliers, something that will happen very rarely. But there are plenty of reasons why the new IBR’s graduate school benefits won’t go unnoticed or unused.

Read the full post at Ed Money Watch.