In 2006, the federal government effectively uncapped student borrowing for graduate programs with the introduction of the Graduate PLUS loan program. Access to additional federal loans increased graduate students' borrowing and shifted the composition of their loans from private to federal debt....

This paper documents several facts about graduate program graduation rates using administrative data covering public and nonprofit graduate students in Texas. Despite conventional wisdom that most graduate students complete their programs, only 58 percent of who started their program in 2004...