Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation was one of the largest

student loan A student loan is a type of loan designed to help students pay for post-secondary education and the associated fees, such as tuition, books and supplies, and living expenses. It may differ from other types of loans in the fact that the interest r ...

providers and guarantors in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Headquartered in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

, the corporation is

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

. It was one of the four largest companies which service United States federal student loans: ''Great Lakes'',

Nelnet Nelnet, Inc., is a United States-based conglomerate that deals in the administration and repayment of student loans and education financial services. The company is headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska. The company provides a range of products t ...

Navient Navient is an American corporation based in Wilmington, Delaware that services and collects student loans. Managing nearly $300 billion in student loans for more than 12 million debtors, the company was formed in 2014 by the split of Sallie Ma ...

, and the

Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appa ...

. In 2018, the loan servicing part of the organization was sold to

. The company sometimes gives education-related grants, with a focus on increasing access to higher education.

Loan servicing

The former loan servicing arm of Great Lakes, the ''Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc.'' guaranteed over $51 billion in loans under

FFELP The Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program was a system of private student loans which were subsidized and guaranteed by the United States federal government. The program issued loans from 1965 until it was ended in 2010. Similar loans a ...

, and works with 6,000schools, 1,100lenders and 10,000,000borrowers. In order to replace their loan servicing contract with the

United States Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...

, which expired on June 16, 2019, Great Lakes decided in 2016 to make its bid for a new contract in cooperation with the competing student loan servicer,

. In October 2017, ''Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation'' reached an agreement to sell off 100% of the stock of its subsidiary, the ''Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc.'' to

. The company was to be sold for $150 million, initially keeping CEO Jeff Crosby in charge, but with a plan of consolidating the companies together. On February 7, 2018, Nelnet announced that it had completed the acquisition of ''Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc.''. The loan servicing operation is now a fully owned subsidiary of Nelnet, the combined company now servicing 42% of the total federal student loan debt.

References

External links

* {{Official website
Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation
recipient profile on

USAspending.gov ttp://www.usaspending.gov USASpending.govis a database of spending by the United States federal government. History Around the time of the Act's passage, OMB Watch, a government watchdog group, was developing a site that would do essentially eve ...

*
Contract ED-FSA-09-D-0012
on USAspending.gov Companies based in Madison, Wisconsin United States federal student loan servicers Education finance in the United States