The volume and number of federal student loans, which provide financing to make higher education more accessible, have grown over the past few decades. In 2017, the most recent year for which detailed information was available, $96 billion in new federal student loans was disbursed to 8.6 million students, compared with $36 billion (in 2017 dollars) disbursed to 4.1 million students in 1995. Between 1995 and 2017, the balance of outstanding federal student loan debt increased more than sevenfold, from $187 billion to $1.4 trillion (in 2017 dollars). In this report, the Congressional Budget Office examines the factors that contributed to the growth in the volume of student loans and the effects of changes to student loan policy on borrowing and repayment.