If they increase the Stafford loan amount, the schools would eat it up even faster. I think that most students can’t really handle more than $30k in loans. One of my kids got the Perkins loan one year, and it really wasn’t a good thing. She has that $2000 extra in loans, has been taking the Stafford loans, and I don’t want her to take anything more than that.
If the limits were higher, she’d take the max. Because she can’t take more, she has to work more, I have to pay more as we go. She’s not going to have a high paying job when she graduates, and it is going to be very difficult for her to pay $300 or so per month in loan payments.
We knew all that, so chose a cheaper school to being with. If loan maximums were raised, she (and a lot of other kids) would borrow the max and end up owing $50k or more at graduation. That’s too much.