With grant and scholarship aid as well as family resources unable to keep pace with college costs, loans have become a fact of life for millions of college students each year. In deciding how and how much to borrow, these students are making highly consequential decisions that will impact their future in unknown ways. Policy should aim to reduce the prevalence of postsecondary education opportunities that routinely leave borrowers with loans they cannot repay, and provide students with timely and relevant information and support with which to make borrowing decisions. Compared to the wealth of information available about student borrowing and debt loads, less research has focused on parent borrowing. Available survey data suggest that parents from across the income spectrum rely upon the parent PLUS loan program to pay for their children's education in different ways. More work is needed to understand the use and tradeoffs of using alternative (non-federal) debt to finance college, including short- and long-term consequences of leveraging wealth through credit cards, home equity loans, and private loans with high interest rates. Better understanding parent borrowing, including how those loans are used among those with differential financial strength and their effects on students' and parents' subsequent economic security and mobility would also help fill gaps in the research, especially as parent PLUS borrowing may uniquely impact Black families with limited wealth.