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“It’s red tape like this that keeps 40 percent of college students from even
applying for federal aid,” the secretary said, according to a copy of her
prepared remarks. “That’s nearly eight million students. And we believe most
would have been eligible for assistance.”

The much larger category of student-aid directors earned a median salary of
$62,800, the survey found, though salary also varied by institution type. The
median salary was highest ($74,110) at four-year public colleges and
universities, followed by two-year public colleges at $61,000. Directors at
four-year private institutions earned $60,710, while those at two-year private
colleges made the least ($54,000).

Last year, student-aid administrators at the dean or vice-president level
earned a median of $110,000 at four-year public institutions, $83,177 at
four-year private colleges, and $75,384 at two-year publics.

Many student-aid offices give students a "preferred-lender list," which
reduces the number of lenders a college is likely to deal with each year, making
choosing a lender less complicated.

But the rules have changed since Andrew M. Cuomo, New York's attorney
general, began investigating the sometimes too-close relationships between
colleges and preferred lenders in 2007. While the new regulations can help
prevent bias in the selection of lenders, they have some aid administrators
afraid to give students any advice.

First, their offices' relationships with lenders were called into question.
And more recently, they've had to contend with the credit crunch and, for some,
the loss of loan providers. Those issues were understandably rehashed here at
the annual conference of the National Association of Student Financial Aid
Administrators.

Wednesday’s announcement by Miller that the House Education and Labor
Committee would hold a hearing April 25, featuring Cuomo, more or less assured
(as if there was any doubt) that the drumbeat of news flowing from the multiple
student loan investigations will continue unabated.

In what has at times seemed like a competition (but clearly a cooperative
one) between Cuomo and Congressional Democrats, Kennedy, particularly, kept pace
on Wednesday.