Some Programs Offer Early Start to Access Grad PLUS Loans

With the end of Grad PLUS loans fast approaching, a small number of institutions are promoting a loophole of sorts of help their incoming classes avoid losing out on the funding option: starting their courses this summer, before the graduate school loan program disappears.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes a provision allowing anyone who has already secured a Grad PLUS loan by July 1 to be grandfathered in to receiving the loan for the following three years, or until they finish the program. That means students who start their graduate programs in May or June of 2026 will still be eligible moving forward, while those who start just a month later will not.

To take advantage of that provision, some institutions are encouraging their incoming students to consider beginning their studies early. Fordham University’s master of social work program emailed accepted students, urging them to commit by March 15 to secure a summer spot so they can use Grad PLUS loans and avoid caps on other federal loans.

Colleges nationwide are contending with the elimination of Grad PLUS loans, a federal loan for students capped at the cost of attendance. The loans made graduate education significantly more accessible, but Republicans have argued that they encouraged institutions to raise the price of graduate programs, fueling the student debt crisis. Along with the elimination of Grad PLUS, the OBBBA also capped federal loans for most graduate programs at $100,000 and a handful of professional programs at $200,000 for students starting after the July 1 deadline.

Now, institutions are searching for ways to help students afford their programs, with some establishing agreements with preferred private lenders and others launching their own loan programs. The timeline for determining how to respond to the new law has been tight; the legislation was passed in July 2025 and the regulations related to loans have yet to be finalized. Institutions told Inside Higher Ed in December that they were still figuring out their plans.

Debra McPhee, dean of the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham, said the program usually offers a summer start for its online students, but this year administrators decided to promote it as an opportunity to avoid changes to federal loans, extending it to the in-person cohort.

“It has the advantage of getting them eligible for Grad PLUS, but it’s also a pilot for us; lots of people talk about doing year-round … graduate programs” because many graduate students are adults who do not opt to go home for the summer, she said. “The timing is good—if we’re ever going to pilot it, pilot it this year.”

McPhee said the social work program at Fordham—and the field more broadly—has already made every effort to become more affordable, including reducing unpaid field hours and lowering tuition, amid a nationwide shortage of mental health professionals.

“I think the focus of the current administration is to try to put pressure on universities to reduce tuition, but they’re missing … what the down-the-river impact is going to be on communities,” she said.

Stetson University’s law school is taking a similar approach; though the school does not usually offer students a summer start, it will for the class entering in 2026 so students can remain eligible for Grad PLUS. Law school dean D. Benjamin Barros said it’s been an extra lift to ensure that enough professors are available and to adjust the highly structured law school curriculum to a summer start.

“The biggest things we’re doing that we typically would not do are: We have people teach in the summer, we have orientation in the summer, we have all those student services for incoming students that we typically wouldn’t have. So, I don’t want to make it out to be some herculean effort, [but] it was complicated,” said Barros, who is among the faculty who will teach over the summer.

(The annual tuition for Stetson’s law school is $58,217, and Fordham’s M.S.W. program costs $34,038. Law is considered a professional program that is subject to the higher $200,000 loan cap, while social work is not.)

‘Unanswered Questions’

Only a limited number of institutions are taking this tack. Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said that, when the legislation first passed last year, numerous institutions asked NASFAA if they could move their start dates up. She told them they could, but they’d be required to communicate the change clearly and consistently across all platforms and official documents—and verify the new date with their accreditor. For institutions that don’t already offer summer courses, shifting the start date earlier would also mean coordinating with faculty and other university offices to ensure they could accommodate classes, housing and other resources.

She also noted that the regulations for Grad PLUS loans are not yet set in stone; they currently allow students who start classes and begin receiving loans by the end of June to qualify for the legacy provision, but that could change. The uncertainty may be why most universities aren’t promoting this option.

“I think there are some unanswered questions,” she said. “Because of the compressed timeline and because we are still waiting for some questions to be answered, that will be so late … some schools were hesitant to upend the apple cart.”

A handful of other institutions are not necessarily promoting a summer jump start but do provide information in FAQs and informational pages about how students can qualify for Grad PLUS loans. Once question in an FAQ for the Teachers College at Columbia University about Grad PLUS loans notes how many credits incoming students would have to take in its summer sessions to be grandfathered in.

However, New America, a liberal think tank, criticized one institution, the National University of Natural Medicine, for “rushing” incoming students toward loans to beat the July 1 deadline.

“Enrolling as many students as possible during this window would benefit NUNM, which stands to lose significant revenue, and likely enrollment, under the new loan ceiling,” wrote Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, New America’s higher education investigations manager, in a blog post. “In the school’s scheme, only it benefits, able to still collect Grad PLUS loans and the money coming in under the previous lending rates.”

Still, offers to start early seems to be resonating. Deposits for Fordham’s social work program are up 30 percent, McPhee said, and while numbers aren’t in yet at Stetson, Barros said some students have expressed gratitude for the offer—particularly those who already have debt from another graduate program.

“I heard from a student who’s going to join us that this was a very meaningful thing for her,” he said. “So that’s why we’re doing it.”