Just as students are about to apply for their loans for next fall, many lenders have stopped making student loans. This week, two of the largest, Citicorp and Bank of America, pulled out. Higher educational institutions are rapidly switching back to direct loans from the government, but the Department of Education may be swamped despite the fact that no student has been denied a loan yet and despite DOE's claims that it's ready to make loans that private lenders won't.

Sallie Mae's CEO Albert Lord wrote two days ago in Wednesday's quarterly earnings report, "Today's environment is the most difficult we have seen in our 35-year history of student lending. It has become obvious that we can only meet the enormous student credit demands we are seeing at Sallie Mae if there is a near-term, system-wide liquidity solution."