Squeezed Lenders Abandon Students

DURING THIS TIME of year, students are typically a lot more concerned about what they're going to do over summer break than they are about shopping for student loans. But this year is different. Thanks to the credit crunch, college lenders are exiting the marketplace en masse, leaving students with fewer choices — and more uncertainty — when it comes to securing their next round of financing for school.

So far, 60 lenders have stopped or temporarily suspended their participation in the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP), according to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of the financial aid information web site FinAid.org. (FFELP allows private lenders to make federally-guaranteed Stafford and PLUS loans.) The nation's biggest lender, Sallie Mae, recently announced it will stop offering consolidation loans and paying for loan origination fees. Meanwhile, many large lenders including College Loan Corp., HSBC Bank, Washington Mutual and Zions Bank, are suspending lending altogether. (For an up-to-date list, visit FinAid.org's web site.)

Unfortunately, the situation is only expected to get worse as lenders continue to struggle with securitizing and selling their loan portfolios to investors, says Kantrowitz. Burned by the subprime mortgage crisis, lenders are having a hard time making a profit off of these loans. "Only the largest banks that not just originate these loans but also hold onto them are the ones likely to stay," Kantrowitz predicts.

For the time being, however, there are still more than 2,000 companies that continue to offer student loans, including big institutions like J.P. Morgan Chase that are actually looking to expand their stake in the business. (J.P. Morgan Chase declined comment for this story.) "As of now, this is a crisis for lenders, but not a crisis for student borrowers," says Michael Dunnenberg, director of the education policy program at the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. "As lenders are exiting the marketplace, others are stepping in to grab market share."

Individual schools are also helping to pick up the slack. The number of schools applying to participate in the government's direct-lending program, which has so far been immune to the credit crisis, is on the rise. Nearly 60 schools filed applications in the first quarter this year, more than you'd typically see for the whole year, Kantrowitz says. (Currently, only about 20% of the roughly 4,000 colleges and universities in the higher education system are direct lenders.)

Nevertheless, borrowing will be trickier and more time-consuming this year. "Students are going to have to be much more assertive in the process and make sure everything's going to go through," says Kalman Chany, author of "Paying for College Without Going Broke." "If you're going to a FFELP lender, you have to shop around and give it more time. Don't wait until a couple of weeks before the tuition bill is due."

Here are some things you can do to make sure you get the financing you need in today's market:

Apply early and stay on top of it

Under normal circumstances, most lenders don't even talk to students before July 1. But today, Gary Carpenter, a certified college planning specialist in Syracuse, N.Y., is advising his first-year student clients to start contacting lenders as soon as they choose a school. (The acceptance deadline at most schools is May 1.) Returning students should contact their school or current lender to see if they're still in business. If they aren't, it's time to start shopping for another lender.