RESTON, Va. — SLM Corp., the biggest U.S. educational lender, said it will loan money to all eligible students who apply for the next school year.
SLM, known as Sallie Mae, will fund “every eligible student loan application received from every student at every school,” the company said Tuesday in a statement.
Dozens of college lenders stopped making loans because the U.S. cut subsidies and investors shunned bonds backed by student loans amid a global tightening of credit. Sallie Mae said May 21 that it would stay in the federally guaranteed student-loan program because the Department of Education offered a plan to buy student debt.
Sallie Mae will continue to make Stafford, Parent Plus and Grad Plus loans at schools eligible for federally subsidized loans, spokesman Tom Joyce said Tuesday in a phone interview. The company last year said it was reducing the number of private loans it made to students at schools with high graduation and default rates.
The company is also offering fewer so-called borrower benefits such as paying the upfront fees the government charges students or offering lower rates for automatic bank-account deductions because of last year’s cuts in the government’s loan subsidy, Joyce said.
