Financial aid offices on college campuses and the companies that make student loans must keep a proper distance from one another. But on some Wisconsin campuses, the two are entangled, as reporting by the Journal Sentinel’s Megan Twohey has documented. State and federal lawmakers are reviewing the propriety of those relationships in Wisconsin and around the nation, and the result must be laws barring close ties.
The current controversy over highly profitable student loan companies also gives Congress an opportunity to look at whether the companies deserve the generous federal support they get. These firms compete with the government’s own direct-lending program, which costs taxpayers less.