History
American Student Assistance was founded in 1956 under the name Massachusetts Higher Education Assistance Corporation (MHEAC). The organization began when a group of people approached Massachusetts local businesses for philanthropic donations with the idea of creating a pool of money to guarantee loans for higher education. MHEAC went on to become the nation’s first student loan guarantor. Its model of a student loan program—funded by local banks and insured by a non-profit organization—was replicated across the country and by 1965, there were 14 loan guarantors in the United States.
In 1990, the United States Department of Education designated MHEAC as the guarantor for Washington, D.C. By 1992, MHEAC had begun to expand its services nationwide, so the organization adopted a trade name of American Student Assistance to reflect that its services were available to U.S. student loan borrowers everywhere.
Read more about this topic: American Student Assistance
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)