Expert: Les Thomas - 1/20/2012

Question
Hi Les,

Do you know where can I find the number of students taking out private loans for individual colleges / universities in the US?

I'm not looking for general US numbers, but rather a way to find how many students at each school are taking out private student loans. I have a list of about 250 schools for a research project...

Thanks,
Bruce

Answer
Bruce,

You'll have to get with the College Board, or the US Department of Education to get those statistics... unfortunately I don't know of any specific website you can go where all that information is available.

What I do know - is that the Federal Government just took over all the Student Loans this year because the total Student Loan Debt just surpassed the total Credit Card Debt in the United States... over $1 Trillion Dollars.  That looks like this, $1,000,000,000,000.00!

The reason the Federal Government took over the loans is because - no loans will ever be forgiven from this point forward.  If you don't pay... they now have the ability to force payment out of your check, put a lien on your home, place a lien on you bank account, etc.

Absolutely amazing!

Good luck with your project... I hope this was of some help.