This topic came up a few weeks ago on Monroe on a Budget – the rules have changed for college financing.

ABC News has a status report today with Is your student loan safe?

A snippet:

Forget back-to-school shopping: With just a few weeks to go before the start of the fall semester, many college students are doing some last-minute student-loan shopping as more and more cash-strapped lenders drop out of the student loan business. …

PLUS loans don’t work for everyone. Dyneche Duffield, 18, of Nacogdoches, Texas, comes from a single-parent household. She and her mother, she said, don’t receive financial support from her father, and while Duffield has obtained federal student loans, her mom’s poor credit history has kept her from qualifying for a PLUS loan.

Instead, Duffield, an incoming freshman at Houston Baptist University, is now applying for private loans, which generally have higher interest rates than federally-backed loans like PLUS. (PLUS loan interest rates are currently 8.5 percent; interest rates on federal Stafford loans are 6 percent this year.)

Duffield has noticed the decline in student lenders. Her local bank, she said, used to offer student loans but recently stopped.

Are you wondering how to pay for college? I have a sidebar on College financing. The resources on my blog are aimed at southeast Michigan families, but there are links and tips applicable to other communities.