Prior research has struggled to identify whether or not student loans help students succeed and graduate from college.  This paper attempts to shed light on the relationship between student success and loans by examining the impacts of federal loan access on educational and employment outcomes for community college students.  With administrative data from over 50 community colleges from 2001-02 to 2009-10, I use a fixed-effects regression estimation strategy to analyze the impact of the availability of student loans by exploiting the variation of community colleges’ policy in providing federal loans to students.  Preliminary results suggest that students with access to loans are more likely to borrow and attempted more credits in their first year of college compared to their peers without loans access.  Students with loan access are also significantly more likely to graduate with an associate’s degree, but the impact is small.  I also analyze students who experience an institution’s switch from offering loans in students’ first year to not offering loans in the second year and find that students make up for the loss of loan access by working while enrolled.