The student loan scandal gets more outrageous with each new development. While the perks lenders were providing to financial aid officers might have seemed harmless, the investigations have uncovered a smoking gun proving that they were effecting the advice students received in some cases. According to the Wall Street Journal,.the University of Texas at Austin's financial aid office ranked student lenders based on the meals provided to student loan officials. I'm sure college students asking for advice on lending would be thrilled to learn that: In internal reviews of their lists of lenders recommended to students, financial-aid officials rated the loan companies based on loan volume, customer service and whether they offered students reduced fees. But "visibility" was another factor the office cited, which it defined as "based on the number of lunches, breakfasts and extracurricular functions for entire OSFS staff." Lenders on the list were graded on the quality of their culinary largesse by metrics ranging from "very good" to "poor."

This is reminiscent of the Wall Street analyst scandals of the late 1990's and early 2000's (and if you believe conflict of interests are gone away, I have shares of Overstock.com you might want to buy), when one firm paid bonuses to its analysts based on the number of buy recommendations they gave for companies the firm had business with, rather than the accuracy of their research and predictions.

I hope that high school guidance counselors are warning students about the dangers of college financial aid offices. I'm surprised at how little media attention this scandal has gotten -- I'd like to see a one-hour presentation on it on CNBC. As young, naive college students seek advice on financial loans, they need to learn the cardinal rule of personal finance: Trust no one with a vested interest in lying to you.

One of these days, I would like to see a New York Attorney General go to trial with a prominent case of white-collar crime. In the wake of the internet stock crash and uncovering of unscrupulous analysts, then New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer was able to put together a strong case against Henry Blodget -- and then he promptly settled the case for a fine that was far less than the amount Blodget earned and, worst of all, Blodget didn't even have to admit guilt.

I'm going to be really disappointed if there isn't a massive amount of outrage in response to this. According to a piece in Thursday's New York Times, students calling the financial aid office at some colleges may, unbeknownst to them, actually end up speaking with a representative from a student lending corporation. Their calls are automatically routed and answered as though they had reached the college's office. But they haven't. This is how a representative from Texas Tech, which engages in this practice, responded to questions:

Becky Wilson, director of financial aid at Texas Tech, defended the practice of routing student financial aid questions to Nelnet and said that the university was "trying to make the aid process as seamless as possible for students" so they do not have to deal with multiple people. She said that if call center workers identified themselves as Nelnet employees it would cause confusion ...

Great. And I suppose that disgraced Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget's practice of giving stock recommendations based on the encouragement (read: bonuses) provided by the company's investment banking arm made the process "seamless."

But New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sees through this. He said the call centers pose "an inherent conflict of interest" because "a self-interested lender is providing what is purported to be unbiased advice."

That's exactly the point. I'm certainly not saying that there is anything bad going on. I would never accuse banks or other companies in the financial services industry of not acting in their customers' best interests (although James Scurlock certainly would, and does, in his amazing book Maxed Out). But just as the not-necessarily corrupt relationship between investment banks and research analysts provides ample opportunity for unscrupulous conduct, it seems likely that this system of colleges forwarding calls to loan providers does as well.