No single entity has bought out the entire Nelnet company; rather, Nelnet, Inc. (NNI) is a publicly traded company with significant insider ownership, and they have acquired other companies like Great Lakes Educational Loan Services in 2018, while recently selling off its renewable energy division (Nelnet Renewable Energy) to MARS Energy Group in late 2025.
In 2018, Nelnet acquired the student loan company Great Lakes, along with Great Lakes' federal student loan servicing contract. Nelnet now services federal student loans under its own name and private student loans under the brand FirstMark.
"The U.S. Department of Education (ED) authorized the transfer of your federal student loan(s) from Nelnet to CRI," the message said.
Nelnet owns over 50 subsidiaries that administer and collect student loans throughout the United States and Canada, such as in Tuition, infiNET, LoanSTAR, and TriCura Canada, Inc. Through its subsidiary, FACTS Management, Nelnet owns RenWeb, a school management program.
Today, the White House announced an indefinite pause of the collection of defaulted federal student loan debt, including through the Treasury Offset Program, which applies any tax refunds towards a defaulted borrower's outstanding federal student loan debt.
Federal student loans may come off your credit report either seven and a half years after the default or seven years after the loan was transferred to the Department of Education. In both cases, the strikes on your credit report will disappear only if you start to make payments.
In fact, it was 2004 before the Obamas paid off the last of their student loans. That's not the future he wants for today's college students.
Whether you will have a balance left to be forgiven at the end of your repayment period depends on several factors, such as how quickly your income rises and how large your income is relative to your debt. Because of these factors, you may fully repay your loan before the end of your repayment period.
The Nelnet Brand is Born
Union Financial Services rebrands to become National Education Loan Network, or Nelnet.
Plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit say the companies failed to protect their information through reasonable cybersecurity measures. Nelnet is a student loan servicer that manages payments and other aspects of student loans for borrowers.
Only after you pay your federal student loans can the default be removed, but it will still take seven years from the time of repayment for those accounts to be removed. Keep in mind: Federal law limits how long most types of negative information can remain on your credit report.
It's common for lenders to sell mortgages they've originated to offload that debt to a different servicer. If that happens to your mortgage, you'll have a new servicer. The terms and details of your loan won't change, but you will have a new servicer responsible for the day-to-day administration of your mortgage.
This process of paying off your loan over time is called amortization. Using the formula above, for a $50,000 student loan with a 10-year repayment at 5% interest, you can expect to make monthly payments of around $530 per month.
On Dec. 9, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education announced a proposed settlement agreement that would end the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan. The settlement must be approved by the court before it can be implemented. Borrowers can use the Loan Simulator to begin exploring other repayment options.
Even if we transfer your loans to a new servicer, we (the U.S. Department of Education) still own your loans. The “transfer” to another servicer means that a new servicer will support you as you repay your loans fully.
Heads Up: Your Loan Servicer May Have Changed
Here are some of the recent student loan transfers: Navient loans are now under Aidvantage. GSMR loans are now under Edfinancial Services. Great Lakes loans are now under Nelnet.
If you repay your loans under an IDR plan, the end of term balance on your student loans may be forgiven after you make a certain number of payments over 20 or 25 years (240 or 300 monthly payments).
If you continue to be late, we are required to report your loan(s) as delinquent to the nationwide consumer reporting agencies starting at 90 days past due. The longer you go without making payments, the more your delinquency can affect your credit rating.
Navient, Nelnet, and Ascendium are separate loan servicers. Sallie Mae used to own Navient before it spun off in 2014. They're independent companies with different loan portfolios and programs. Federal Navient loans were moved to MOHELA or Aidvantage, where you can still use IDR, SAVE, or PSLF.
According to recent research from the Education Data Initiative, it costs the average student $38,270 per year to attend a four-year university in the United States. Right now, the average student loan debt in the U.S. is nearly $40,000 but many students borrow much more.
The Nelnet data breach class action lawsuits, which were consolidated in January 2023, alleged that the student loan servicer (as well as Edfinancial and OSLA, which received technology services from Nelnet) did not implement necessary security measures to safeguard the personal information stored on its systems, which ...
The timeline for repaying $100,000 depends on your repayment plan, interest rate and monthly contribution. The average time to pay off 100k student loans ranges from 10 to 25 years.
Direct Stafford Loan. Direct Stafford Loans are student loans that must be repaid and are available to both undergraduate and graduate students. First-year undergraduates are eligible for loans up to $5,500. Amounts increase for subsequent years of study, with higher amounts for graduate students.
So for current English students and all those who started since September 2023 your loan will wipe 40 years after the April after you left university. In all of these it's the April after you left university that's the key point.
Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program in 2007 as part of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act (the “Act”). The final bill passed with wide bipartisan majorities before being signed into law by President George W. Bush.