What Is the National Student Loan Database?

The National Student Loan Database is something every single student who has borrowed a student loan should know about.  While this database is particularly useful for students who had to borrow money for college from a wide variety of lenders, this is a tool that makes loan management much easier for students regardless of how much they’ve borrowed.  The National Student Loan Database is a central database put together by the U.S. Department of Education, which gathers information from a wide variety of sources to put together a complete picture of any individual student’s overall situation.  This means while the loans for students may come from a wide variety of different sources, students will always be able to check on the database to see who owns their loans and where payments need to be made.

How does the Department of Education gather all this information?

The U.S. Department of Education collects information from both the schools that disperse the financial aid to students as well as the actual corporations that work to disperse the Federal loans for students.  This is an important point to note: private loans are not included in the database.  While many students do end up needing to go the private route for at least some of their money for college, the National Student Loan Database can only track loans from public sources.  This still makes it a great tool for loan management, however for some borrowers it might not be the “end all, be all” as far as management tools go.

What type of information does the National Student Loan Database have?

There’s a good reason why this database is still considered an excellent loan management tool.  Aside from being a complete list of public loans for students, a borrower can also look up information like the original type of loan, the original amount disbursed, the amount still owed, and other important information directly related to those loans.  Taking out money for college can be stressful enough as it is.  You don’t want to have to keep years of paperwork from two, three, four, or more different lenders to know who owns what or how much you need to pay!

The National Student Loan Database is a great tool for student borrowers

To get a full look at what they owe and what their loan situation is, it’s great; but what about private loans?  There are many private educational loans for students and at some point many will need at least one.  It would be nice, and would make overall loan management much easier, if there was a similar database for private education loans but unfortunately there’s not.  Any type of educational loan from a private bank or institution will have to be kept track of individually by the borrower.  When it comes to getting money for college, and scrapping together enough for four years of college, some students need to go above and beyond the National Student Loan Database Service to make sure that they get enough.  For most, a combination of public and privately funded student loans will be the perfect combination.

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