Purpose: This paper aims to develop, refine and validate a multidimensional scale for measuring students' attitude toward educational debt for higher studies in Punjab (India) and the impact of this attitude on the satisfaction of students. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses interview and survey approach. The sample comprises 417 students from four public and four private universities of Punjab (India). Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis have been used to develop and validate students' attitude toward education loan scale (Morgado et al., 2017). Further, structural equation modeling (SEM) has been used to analyze the impact of factors of students' attitude on their satisfaction. Findings: The scale has been tested for both reliability and validity. Analysis has revealed six factors of students' attitude toward educational debt, namely, economic empowerment, social empowerment, utility, procedural requirements, risk and stress. These, six independent variables and one dependent variable, i.e. students' satisfaction, were entered into structural equation model. The structural equation model shows that procedural requirements, economic empowerment and utility have a positive, whereas stress has a negative and significant impact on the students' satisfaction. Practical implications: Education financing is a gigantic problem nowadays due to the high cost of self-financing courses in Punjab. To make higher education accessible to all students, education loan plays a vital role. Thus, the attitude of students is of great importance to policymakers to bring reforms in education loan scheme. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the foremost study for developing a validated tool to measure the students' attitude toward educational debt in India.