Congress created the Parent PLUS loan program in 1980 to “provide high-wealth families with a low-interest loan option for parents supporting their children’s college costs,” according to Georgetown University’s Center on Poverty and Inequality.
But as the center and other researchers have pointed out in recent years, the loans have increasingly been taken out by low-income families to make up college funding gaps. Meanwhile, students of wealthier families can sometimes benefit from deep tuition discounts from colleges trying to attract them.
The left-leaning think tank New America recently delved into those two issues in tandem, looking at colleges that offered…