A loan holder is the entity that owns your student loan. The loan holder of a Direct Loan is the U.S. Department of Education. A loan servicer is a company we assign to handle the billing and other services on your federal student loan on our behalf, at no cost to you.
FSA, an office of the U.S. Department of Education (ED), is the largest provider of student financial aid in the nation.
For Direct Loans, the lender is the U.S. Department of Education. If you have a FFEL Program loan, the lender may be a financial institution such as a bank or credit union.
Most student loans — about 92.4% — are owned by the government.
Student loans are owned by the federal government or private institutions, depending on the type of student loan. Federal student loans are owned by the U.S. Department of Education while private student loans are owned by the financial institution that granted them.
Who has the most student loan debt by race? Black adults are more likely to have student loan debt than those in other racial or ethnic groups. They are more likely than white adults to hold student debt at every level of educational attainment.
An Easy Way to Identify ED-HELD Loans
Login to StudentAid.gov. Click on “view details”, then look for “Loan Breakdown” on the Aid Summary page to see a list of your federal student loans. If the servicer name begins with “DEPT OF ED”, the loan is owned by the U.S. Department of Education.
Private loans may be bought out by another company. Federal loans may be transferred by the U.S. Department of Education from one member of its servicing team to another. Your federal loan servicer's contract may end with the U.S. Department of Education, resulting in a transfer.
Why do loans get switched or transferred to a different servicer? Sometimes, we need to transfer loans from one servicer to another—for example, when a servicer's contract with us ends. Even if we transfer your loans to a new servicer, we (the U.S. Department of Education) still own your loans.
What are the differences between federal and private student loans? Federal student loans are made by the government, with terms and conditions that are set by law, and include many benefits (such as fixed interest rates and income-driven repayment plans) not typically offered with private loans.
The office of Federal Student Aid is responsible for directly managing or overseeing an outstanding federal student loan portfolio comprised of billions of dollars in Title IV loans and representing millions of borrowers.
The federal government began guaranteeing student loans provided by banks and non-profit lenders in 1965, creating the program that is now called the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program.
Your loans were not sold. ED will continue to own your loans; however, MOHELA will manage your loans and assist you on ED's behalf as your federal student loan servicer. This change in servicer will not impact the existing terms, conditions, interest rate or available repayment plans of your federal student loans.
Sallie Mae is not a federal loan servicer.
But in 2014, it split into two separate companies. The Sallie Mae of today, however, is an education solutions company and consumer banking business. The other company became Navient. Importantly, the two companies are independent and not associated with one another.
You repay your Direct Loan(s) to the U.S. Department of Education via a Servicer they assign to you. Before you take out a loan, it's important to understand that a loan is a legal obligation that you will be responsible for repaying with interest.
The federal government won't take your home because you owe student loan debt.
If your student loan balance is suddenly showing zero, some of the many reasons could be: Your federal student aid or private student loans were forgiven. You've completed one of the student loan forgiveness programs. You qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), or.
The outstanding federal loan balance is $1.620 trillion and accounts for 91.2% of all student loan debt. 42.8 million borrowers have federal student loan debt.
Federal student loan servicers handle your federal student loans on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education. The biggest loan servicers are MOHELA, Aidvantage and Nelnet. Your loan servicer might have changed during the payment pause. Find out who your loan servicer is by logging in to your student loan account.
Most federal student loans are owned and held by the federal government through the Department of Education. There are some older federal student loans that are owned and held by a private company or state agency.
Navient served as a federal student loans servicer in the past, but it has faced legal allegations of loan mismanagement in recent years. The company stopped servicing most federal student loans in December 2021. In July 2024, Navient began transferring its remaining student loan servicing portfolio to MOHELA.
Four years after graduation, black students owe an average of 188% more than white students borrowed. Black and African American student borrowers are the most likely to struggle financially due to student loan debt making monthly payments of $260.
Higher percentages of Black (88 percent) and American Indian/Alaska Native (87 percent) students received grants than students who were of Two or more races (79 percent), White (74 percent), and Asian (66 percent).
Black students must borrow more to pay for college, they are twice as likely to default on their loans, and their debts last far longer than those of white borrowers. Failing to recognize that student debt does not pay for itself, many policymakers have neglected these racial impacts.