Your Questions About Education

In a recent newsletter, we asked for your questions about education. You wondered about student loans, the Columbia settlement and international students, among other topics. Today, The Times’s expert beat reporters answer. (Got a question for us? Submit it here.)

Student debt

More than anything else, readers wondered about how they’d pay for college. Tara Siegel Bernard, who covers personal finance, fields these questions:

How will the passage of the federal policy bill change Pell Grants and access to higher education for students from low-income families? Karen Stanish, Keene, N.H.

Many people may find that pursuing higher education is more difficult or more expensive. Students who rely on their parents to take out loans will face new borrowing limits, as will graduate students. And new work requirements for Medicaid could make it harder to balance school with a job. On the other hand, students will be able to use Pell Grants for nondegree programs, like job training. But if students get other types of grants that fully cover the cost of attendance — from the school, from a state government, from a local scholarship — they can no longer get a Pell.

Not enough has been said about the federal loan cap on graduate education (medical school, law school, etc.) from the policy bill. What is the change, and how will schools adjust? Matt Kleinman, Washington, D.C.