The attorney answer here is, "It depends." You can get more than 48 months of schooling if it is warranted by your kind of rehabilitation plan and if you have a "serious employment handicap." There are a whole host of factors at play when VR&E considers whether to extend benefits. There are some other technical workarounds, in theory, but having a Serious Employment Handicap is the only one I have familiarity with. To give an example from my own experience, I received benefits from Voc Rehab from 2003 to 2016, which translates into a lot of months. And it did not come easy. Many of the strategies I used are within the Voc Rehab Survival Guide.