As the credit crunch in the U.S. continues it’s not only mortgages that are becoming harder to get, but also student loans. Today several banks announced that they would stop providing loans to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and less competitive schools. However, students at the nation’s top universities will not be affected by these cuts.

The reason lenders such as Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase and SunTrust are dropping some 2-year schools for loans is due to the fact students at community colleges generally come from the lower rungs of the economic ladder and are therefore determined to be more risky to loan to. Of course, because these students tend to be less fortunate financially the loan money is more important to them and not having access to loans hurts them more. It’s a rather cruel circumstance of the credit crisis when these students are trying to get an education so they can move forward in life and earn more, yet are now having to consider delaying their education simply because they can’t afford it.

More than 6.2 million of the 14.8-million undergraduates in U.S., which is over 40%, attend community colleges so this could have a big impact. Students will be forced to either take a semester off to earn tuition money, put the tuition charges on high-interest rate credit cards, or simply work more while in school. All of these options create stress and make it harder to succeed.