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The Trump administration made waves in higher education last fall when, as part of the Big Beautiful Bill package, the administration took an ax to Grad PLUS loans.
The loans made borrowing for graduate school more accessible to students, allowing many to borrow up to the total cost of their going to school. The loans will be eliminated for new borrowers on July 1. New aggregate borrowing caps provide up to $100,000 for graduate programs and $200,000 for professional programs, but the latter applies to only a narrow list of degrees.
Lewis & Clark’s Graduate School of Education and Counseling has launched an initiative to replace those loans. The Bridge the Gap Scholarship program, announced earlier this month, aims to support all students entering the college with financial need. (Education was not included among the 11 degree fields the Trump administration deemed unquestionably “professional,” resulting in a lower borrowing cap.)
Lewis & Clark dean of education Andy Saultz tells WW he anticipates students could receive awards between $1,000 and $3,000, but the fund still has time to expand. (It is currently at $400,000.) The college is also working to develop a preferred lender list to help students obtain private loans at lower, negotiated rates. That list will be available in April, and Saultz says the graduate school is relying on high employment rates and a 0% default rate among its students to negotiate.
Saultz says reduced Grad PLUS loans could impede education careers that require master’s degrees, such as school counseling, school psychology, and addiction counseling. “We had to do something proactively,” he adds. “My worry is a couple years from now, we’ll have more of a shortage than we already do in some of these fields.”
