We're not really recovered...

....from our depressed state of the student lending industry. But we'll resume posting here.

Been getting lots of gossip from many industry participants. So, we'll continue to highlight here say, gossip, and unverified "facts". A lot of stuff that y'all send us we can't really distribute (loan volume data for a specific entity, etc), but we'll certainly discuss anecdotal information.

We'll start posting more regularly in a day or so, but to sum up the past 6 months: Yecccch! The industry for the most part is being facilitated by the Dept of Ed's "direct loan" program. That's pretty much the only place where you'll get a Stafford/Plus loan (or any other guvm't guaranteed loan). There's a few others out there, but Direct seems to have picked up the volume....and we eat some crow here: our predictions of a Direct Loan meltdown didn't materialize. We have no information/data/feedback about application servicing issues, but that's probably because the Dept of Ed is handling the volume. We're pretty sure that ACS is the sole outsourced partner to do the actual work....Sallie Mae tried to get some of the business, but we never heard where that went.

As for private loans: the only folks getting approved for a private ed loan are those that can demonstrate that they don't really need the loan in the first place. If your FICO score is less than 720, don't even bother to apply. Nobody is lending to an applicant that even smells like a credit risk. We're sure this disruption will be causing problems.

Anywhoo, we'll get to all this over time. Stay tuned.