Interesting bit from Nelnet Conference Call

This from the Nelnet Investors call:

Sameer Gokhale - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods

You curtailed originations of private student loans but do you have a sense when there’s been a lot of talk recently about the lack of availability of private student loans and how it may be hurting students. In your view are you seeing any signs that the application volume has been hurt because of the lack of availability of private student loans? What kind of color can you share there?

Jeffrey R. Noordhoek, Nelnet President

Well, as relates to our FFELP loan originations we don’t believe that private loan originations are since we’ve renewed this process affecting the volume on FFELP loan originations. We think those are decoupled in the market pretty much today so we don’t see a real impact there. That said, we do believe there is a large disruption going on in the private loan market that has not fully come to the forefront of the press. I know there is an article this week in the Wall Street Journal about that. We believe that there is a vacuum of private loans that are not there and that students are going to be struggling to try to replace them coming up in the months of August and September as they realize that they can’t get private loan financing due to the credit crisis.