"Wow -- as if I'm not paying Columbia enough already, now there's a dude profiting off my financial misery." According to an online poll last week by the university's student newspaper, The Spectator, that's the most common campus reaction to news that Columbia's financial aid director, David Charlow, held $72,000 in stock in Student Loan Xpress from 2002 to 2005, even as his office at Columbia was promoting the student loan company as its top "preferred lender."

For the past few weeks, an ongoing investigation by State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, as well as muckraking by the nonprofit New America Foundation, has given the general public a peek at the unseemly kickback relationships between college financial aid offices and student lenders. Colleges in New York and Pennsylvania have already agreed to reimburse students $3.27 million.

Now the subpoenas are rolling. At least one official all the way up at the federal Department of Education is also accused of holding Student Loan Xpress stock. Senator Kennedy, presidential candidate John Edwards, and others are weighing in on the need to clean up the student-loan process, perhaps by eliminating subsidized lenders altogether and switching to the Direct Loan Program...

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