"As the financial world waits for frozen credit markets to thaw, higher-education officials say college students will face unprecedented scrutiny from private lenders as the United States reels from its sharp economic downturn," eSchool News reports. "Students seeking to attend the nation's largest universities whose loan applications come with credit-worthy cosigners likely will have little trouble obtaining financing, experts say--but community college students with scant or checkered credit histories might be driven to nontraditional payment policies. If loans become scarce, colleges might have to establish pay-over-time systems, in which students have an entire semester to pay for classes. Because that requires colleges to absorb the risk, instead of a third-party lender, some financial experts say many institutions would be reluctant to embrace such a model."