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The federal student loan program, Parent PLUS, is suppose to help parents help their sons and daughters attend college by filling the gap between other college aid and the full cost of higher education.

But a report by ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education finds that parents are being overburdened with debt and their credit profiles tainted for years because the loan program does not assess whether the borrower has the ability to repay the loan. Simply put, it’s too easy to qualify.

Part of the problem is that PLUS loans lack a limit on how much can be borrowed, unlike most other student loan programs.

Parents can take out whatever amount  is needed to cover that gap, and colleges are promoting the program, fueling the PLUS loan popularity.

Last year, the federal government disbursed $10.6 billion in Parent PLUS loans to just under a million families. That’s $6.3 billion more than it lent in 2000, and to nearly twice as many borrowers.

An analysis by Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of financial-aid Web sites, uses survey data from 2007-2008, the latest year for which information is available.

For Parent PLUS borrowers in the bottom 10th of income, monthly payments took up 38 percent of their monthly income. Federal programs for financially struggling graduates keeps monthly payments to a much lower share of discretionary income. The data did not include the PLUS-loan debt for parents who borrowed for more than one child.

The data also found that 20 percent of Parent PLUS borrowers took out a loan for a student who received a federal Pell Grant that normally is approved for a household with income of $50,000 or less.

“Right now, the government runs the program by the seat of its pants,” Kantrowitz told ProPublica and The Chronicle. “You do have some parents who are borrowing $100,000 or more for their children’s college education who are getting in completely over their heads. Those parents are going to default, and their lives are going to be ruined, because they were allowed to borrow far more than is rational.”