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By Center for Personal Finance editors

If you're interested in getting a private student loan to help with education costs, your credit union might be able to help. The Credit Union National Association's (CUNA) News Now reports that more credit unions are making private student loans available.

The number of private student lenders has almost doubled in the past 18 months, and many of them are credit unions, according to an article in SmartMoney.com on The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.

 Read the article at SmartMoney.com.

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Unlike most banks that were hit hard by the recession, credit unions have generally maintained healthy balance sheets and are looking for additional sources of revenue.

Some lenders hope to make up for revenue lost by the termination of a program that once allowed them to underwrite federal student loans, according to FinAid.org, a Web site that keeps track of financial aid and scholarship issues.

This means getting a private student loan to fill gaps from federal loan programs will get easier. Private student loan volume is estimated at about $8 billion to $10 billion, says Kevin Moehn, CEO of Moehn & Associates, a financial consulting service that focuses on education lending, in Oakton, Va.

After private student loan volume hit $24 billion in 2007-08, the volume declined by half the following year. Now, many credit unions "are jumping into the private loan space," according to the article.

For more information about private student loans, talk to the lending professionals at your credit union.

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