"What's becoming clear is that this divide is no longer confined to the labor market. It's now embedded in its foundation: education. When access to advanced degrees depends not on ability or workforce demand, but on whether a household can absorb six figures of upfront cost, stratification accelerates. The upper branch compounds advantage through credentialed mobility. The lower branch absorbs risk, debt, and stalled progression."
"That dynamic isn't neutral. It's destabilizing. That is exactly what the restructuring of federal graduate student lending under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) does. Framed as fiscal discipline, it quietly rewires who gets to advance in the American economy-and who pays more just to try. Beginning July 1, 2026, the OBBBA eliminates the Graduate PLUS loan program and replaces it with lifetime federal borrowing caps."
Economic gains and resilience concentrate with asset owners while others absorb volatility, and that divide now extends into education. Access to advanced degrees increasingly depends on whether households can absorb six-figure upfront costs rather than on ability or workforce demand. The upper branch compounds advantage through credentialed mobility while the lower branch absorbs risk, debt, and stalled progression. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act restructures federal graduate lending by eliminating the Graduate PLUS program and imposing lifetime federal borrowing caps starting July 1, 2026. A narrow set of "professional degrees" may borrow up to $200,000 while all other graduate programs face a $100,000 cap, a distinction grounded in academic prestige rather than labor-market need. For many students, especially those with existing undergraduate debt, the $100,000 cap will be binding and effectively ration federal credit.
Read at Fortune
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