Students Scramble to Find Student Loans as Fall Semester Draws Near
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It’s crunch time for college students trying to secure the money they need for the fall semester. But with lenders continuing to suspend their student loan programs — the count now stands at 131 federal loan lenders and 30 private loan lenders — students may find themselves challenged to locate lenders that are still offering federal or private student loans.
In an attempt to help lenders be able to continue making new federal student loans, the government included a provision in the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act, signed into law in May, aimed at providing capital for cash-strapped lenders.
Under this legislation, the Department of Education can buy federal college loans from lenders, thereby providing these lenders with the liquidity they need to continue funding new parent and student loans. The law specifically targets lenders who, in the current credit crunch, are unable to find investors in the secondary market willing to purchase their student loan portfolios.
Even with this legislation in place, however, lenders continue to find themselves forced to suspend their student loan programs. As recently as July 28, the Brazos Higher Education Service Corp., the 26th-largest originator of federal student loans in 2007, and the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority, the largest student loan issuer to Massachusetts residents, both announced that they would no longer be able to provide either new or current borrowers with student loans.
As the suspensions of both federal and private student loan programs keep spreading through all types of lenders — large and small; for-profit and nonprofit; banks, non-banks, and credit unions; state loan agencies and schools-as-lenders — students and their families are finding themselves with fewer borrowing options to get the parent and student loans they need to pay the fall tuition bills that are coming due over these next few weeks.
Two Major Lenders the Latest Casualties of Student Loan Crisis
The Brazos Group, a primarily nonprofit group of higher education lending, servicing, and other financial aid companies, first announced that it would stop offering federal college loans back n March. In May, however, after the government passed the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act, Brazos once again began offering federal parent and student loans, saying that the government’s short-term liquidity plan had renewed the organization’s confidence in its ability to continue offering student loans.
But Brazos once again suspended its education lending program late last month, citing continued turmoil in the student loan industry.
Brazos Executive Vice President Ellis Tredway said his organization simply “ran out of time to get everything in place” to issue new student loans for the fall.
The Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority, which issued more than $500 million in college loans to 40,000 Massachusetts college students and their families last year, had already suspended its federal student loan program in April. Now, MEFA has also pulled the plug on its non-federal private loan program, which provided Massachusetts students with fixed-rate private student loans.
“While we continue to pursue every possible option, raising the necessary funds to offer fixed–interest rate private education loans is taking longer than originally projected and has become even more challenging,” said Tom Graf, MEFA’s executive director.
Students Face the Uncertainty of Switching Lenders
With over 8 million students and parents having turned to federal college loans in 2006–07, according to the College Board, the number or families that stand to be affected by the ongoing wave of lender departures this year is not unsubstantial.
Last week, financial aid officers at Texas A&M University — a school with over 54,000 students — heard from seven different lenders warning that they would no longer be able to offer federal student loans, a situation that has made more than a few borrowers uneasy.
Dyneche Duffield, an incoming college student headed to Houston Baptist University, is uncomfortable with the prospect of having to establish a relationship with a new lender other than her local bank, which used to offer student loans.
“I would have much rather taken out a loan there than somewhere where I didn’t know anyone,” Duffield said.
While students like Duffield may still be able to go directly to the Department of Education for their federal college loans or find those remaining lenders who are still offering private student loans (albeit with more stringent credit criteria that are making it harder for students to qualify), the magnitude of the problem within the student loan credit markets and how deeply it has permeated the college loan industry is alarming to many administrators and officials in higher education.
Kathryn Osmond, executive director of student financial services at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, finds the situation with MEFA to be particularly indicative of a long-lasting and serious problem.
“An economy that is in such a tailspin that it affects a critical agency like MEFA,” said Osmond, “is an economy that scares me.”
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Help answer the question about student loan
How does a student loan affect your credit?I have a student loan that is about 50K. I am making payments on it but I am on the income contingent plan and every month I get a statement showing that what Im paying is not enough to pay even the interest, so the balance is higher every month. Does this negatively affect my credit, I pay every month on time but I want to know if this will affect my credit. Does the 50K count towards debt to available credit ratio also. How does the student loan affect credit ratings?
About Author
Jeff Mictabor is an enthusiast on the topic of student loan issues in the news. He has been writing for the past 10 years for a variety of education publications. He now offers his writing services on a freelance basis.
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Most student loans are limited to citizens or resident aliens of the US. You do not mention whether you are a US citizen living outside the US, or a citizen of another country.
If you are a US citizen, or resident alien (there are a couple of other types of non-citizens that are eligible…refugees for example) then you need to apply each year. The first step is the FAFSA and you can apply on line at http://www.fafsa.ed.gov. After that, there is more to do, but it varies depending on the answers on your FAFSA.
Good luck.
Nope, sorry, but personal loan won't qualify, as you will have nothing in writing to say that it is student loan interest.
No one will "take over" your loans. You will still owe the money to your lender when you are in forbearance. They will simply add interest every month while you are making payments.
If you are asking about defaulting the lender will just contract out with a collection agency to start calling and hounding you to mail them payments. If you make 6 to 12 months worth of willing and reasonable payments you can ask your lender to "rehabilitate" your loan. This is when you are issued a new loan and pay off the one in default so you can get federal fin aid again. Again, rehabilitation can only be done after you have made 6 to 12 months of payments.