Concept: PLUS Loans

A PLUS loan is a student loan that’s part of the Federal Direct Student Loan Program. The former meaning of the PLUS acronym is Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students.

PLUS loans are available for parents of undergraduate students and for graduate and professional students. These loans cover any financial gaps remaining after other types of awarded financial aid, such as grants, scholarships, and other federal student loans.

There are 2 types of PLUS loans:

Direct PLUS
or
Parent PLUS
– These loans are for parents to borrow and repay on behalf of their dependent undergraduate students enrolled at least half time. Parents must meet certain credit requirements to receive PLUS loans.
Grad PLUS
– These loans are available to graduate or professional students who are enrolled at least half time, are eligible for federal student aid, and who don’t have major credit history problems.

After determining a student’s cost of attendance (COA), an institution calculates how much extra funding should come from a PLUS loan after accounting for other aid.

Before receiving funds for a PLUS loan, a parent or graduate student must complete a Master Promissory Note (MPN), which is a contract promising repayment to the federal student loan lender. Afterward, the federal government disburses funds directly to the school for tuition and fees, then sends any remaining funds to the borrower.

Workday processes PLUS loan applications in these ways:

After processing a PLUS loan application, Workday links the application to the PLUS loan student award item and packages the loan with credit-approved loan amounts.

When Workday processes a new PLUS loan application through the

COD PLUS Loan Credit Status Inbound

integration, Workday tries to match the application to a student profile based on their last name, the first 2 letters of their first name, and their Social Security Number (SSN). If there’s no match, Workday then compares the student’s SSN and date of birth. If there’s still no match, Workday doesn’t load the loan application. You must then make the necessary corrections and resubmit the PLUS loan application before Workday can load it.

When there’s a match between a loan application and a student profile, Workday loads the PLUS loan application:

After receiving an approved PLUS loan application, Workday flags the student for repackaging. Packaging must run (manually or automatically with nightly orchestration) to evaluate the new PLUS loan against a student’s unmet need and COA.

With automatic packaging, Workday never exceeds COA. This means that if a credit check was approved for an amount higher than COA, Workday packages only up to the remaining COA amount. On the associated PLUS loan award item, you can also indicate if you’d like Workday to evaluate the award for SAI replacement.

If a PLUS loan is denied due to poor credit, Workday still adds the loan to the student’s

Loan Applications

report on their profile, but doesn’t package the award. At that point, the borrower can make necessary corrections or apply for an endorser to help with loan approval.

When the Department of Education (ED) approves the loan with an endorser, Workday approves the application and disburses the award after meeting these conditions:

Once there’s an approved loan application, Workday packages the student with the PLUS loan.

As an alternative to using Workday’s Inbound integration to process PLUS loan applications, you can also process applications manually.

For more information, see Steps: Set Up Manual Processing of PLUS Loans.

For non-legacy borrowers, Workday does not package graduate PLUS loans for award years 2026-2027 and later. You can package graduate PLUS loans for legacy borrowers and students with graduate PLUS loans in award years 2025-2026 and prior with up to a minimum of the COA or requested loan amount.

When you package a parent PLUS loan for a non-legacy borrower for award years 2026-2027 through 2028-2029, Workday limits the combined total of all parent loans to $20,000 per academic year. These limits also apply when you package for award years 2026-2027 through 2028-2029 for a non-legacy borrower with an existing parent PLUS loan.

You can package parent PLUS loans for legacy borrowers up to a minimum of the Cost of Attendance (COA) or the requested loan amount.

You can’t award a parent PLUS loan for a non-legacy student when they have reached their aggregate loan limit of $65,000.

You can use the

Parent PLUS Loan Aggregate Used in Packaging

report field on the Financial Aid Package business object (secured to the

Reports: Financial Aid Packages

domain) to view the Parent PLUS aggregate amount that NSLDS reported, and which Workday used to package this loan.

Workday requires that you link the PLUS loan award item to a need packaging strategy using 1 of these options:

Option	Description
Package the award provisionally.	Select the Package Provisionally check box for a PLUS loan award item on the Create Student Award Item or Edit Student Award Item task, then add the award item to your desired packaging strategy. The purpose of the provisional status is to help you identify and notify students who can apply for a PLUS loan. If they do so and their PLUS loan is approved, Workday links their loan application to the PLUS loan award in the package and automatically changes the award status to Approved . Workday never disburses awards or transmits them to COD with a provisional status. See Assign Packaging Strategies to Academic Units and Maintain Packaging Reaction Policies.
Don’t package the award provisionally.	Without selecting the Package Provisionally check box on the Create Student Award Item or Edit Student Award Item task, add the award item to your desired packaging strategy. This option allows you to choose where you want Workday to evaluate the PLUS loan against other awards in the strategy. Workday packages the student with a PLUS loan in their package only after receiving an approved PLUS loan application. See Assign Packaging Strategies to Academic Units and Maintain Packaging Reaction Policies.
Don’t add the award.	When you don’t add a PLUS loan award item to a packaging strategy, Workday evaluates PLUS loan eligibility second to last, before alternative loans. Workday packages the student with a PLUS loan in their package only after receiving an approved PLUS loan application.

When a parent or graduate student is eligible for a PLUS loan increase before disbursement, Workday automatically increases the current loan amount up to COA when packaging the existing PLUS loan application.

After disbursement, a parent or graduate student can request an increase only on a new PLUS loan application that references the existing application. Once submitted, Workday imports the new application with an application reason of

Loan Increase

. Repackaging the student in Workday reflects the higher loan amount with the existing PLUS award.

When a parent or graduate student requests an increase, you can manually increase the loan amount on a PLUS loan application. See Increase PLUS Loan Amounts.

When a parent or graduate student requests a decreased PLUS loan amount, edit the

Current Award Year Amount

on the student’s

Total Financial Assistance

report of their Financial Aid profile group, then lock the PLUS loan award. Note that locking the award excludes it from further eligibility evaluation in packaging.