So if any students out there are wondering if they’re going to have trouble getting a loan for school next year, here’s the bottom line: Student loans and student loan companies aren’t going anywhere, but you may need to shop around a little harder to find the best deal. That seems to be what I’m hearing from pretty much everyone I’ve spoken with, no matter what their bias is.

But there is another issue I didn’t have time to include in tonight’s story: the home equity piece. Colleges and universities often use home equity as a way of determining financial need. A family making $50,000 a year who owns a house has different financial strengths than a family who makes $50,000 and rents. With home prices and home equity falling in many regions of the country, schools will need to recalculate need-based aid – and they may find they have more needy students than before. How will institutions deal with this? TBD.

Some families also take out Home Equity Lines of Credit to finance college education, sometimes finding that HELOCs offer better rates than federal loans like the Parent Plus loan, whose rate is fixed at 8.5%. With falling home prices, a HELOC or home equity loan could disappear as an option for many families. To be fair, only a small percentage of families typically use this option, but it could push more people into the Plus Program.

Are any of you concerned about financing your college education, or the college education of one of your children? What has your strategy been?