In collaboration with Columbia University’s Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, we published two articles today about the nonprofit student lending industry.

Students from the Stabile Center, part of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York, investigated and wrote the stories. We at the Investigative Fund oversaw the reporting process and edited the work.

The pieces are the first to result from an ongoing project with the Stabile program that will focus on the relationships between financial companies and universities.

One of today’s stories explores how nonprofit lenders in more than a dozen states ran afoul of state and federal rules in recent years. The other story details how nonprofit lenders persuaded the U.S. House to award them the equivalent of no-bid contracts potentially worth millions of dollars each.

Let us know what you think of today’s stories and stay tuned for more.