The settlement, which Nelnet announced late Friday, is the latest to result from a lawsuit brought by Jon H. Oberg, a former Education Department researcher, on behalf of the federal government. A federal judge ordered Nelnet and seven other student-loan companies to participate in a settlement conference last week after two of the other defendants in the case, Brazos Higher Education Service Corporation and Brazos Higher Education Authority, reached a tentative settlement agreement with Mr. Oberg.Among the other defendants in the case is Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student-loan company. A year ago, the Education Department’s inspector general issued an audit concluding that Sallie Mae overbilled the Education Department for $22.3-million in student-loan subsidies and should be required to return the money to the department.

The second shows that for-profit universities have much lower rates of student loan repayment:

Although the department issued no analysis or comparison of repayment rates by sector, outside advocacy groups that analyzed the data found that in 2009, repayment rates were 54 percent at public colleges and universities, 56 percent at private nonprofit institutions, and 36 percent at for-profit colleges.

“I think it’s notable that the for-profits are the only type of school where the majority of students are unable to repay their loans,” said Debbie Frankle Cochrane, program director at the Institute for College Access and Success, which has called for tighter regulation of for-profit institutions.

At some for-profit colleges, the repayment rates were startlingly low. For example, 33 of the 86 Corinthian Colleges’ Everest locations had repayment rates of less than 20 percent — and at several, the rates were less than 10 percent.

At the headquarters of the University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit education company, the repayment rate was 44 percent, compared with 38 percent at DeVry and 27 percent at Kaplan University, a unit of the Washington Post Company.

“I think this data could have a powerful effect on institutions and students,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education. “No reasonable person will want to go to a school where only one in five students can pay back their student loans.”

The second story sent education stocks lower on Wall Street: If students have a harder time repaying loans to for-profit universities, they might look to other options. But the first story sent Nelnet’s stock up, as the company, had it not come to a settlement, might have faced a much, much larger penalty — three times the $407 million it defrauded from the government, The New York Times says.

With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is questionable. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care. Patrick M. Callan, the center’s president, has warned that low-income students will find college unaffordable.

Meanwhile, the middle class, which has paid for higher education in the past mainly by taking out loans, may now be precluded from doing so as the private student-loan market has all but dried up. In addition, endowment cushions that allowed colleges to engage in steep tuition discounting are gone. Declines in housing valuations are making it difficult for families to rely on home-equity loans for college financing. Even when the equity is there, parents are reluctant to further leverage themselves into a future where job security is uncertain.

Even though we’re still in the middle of this economic mess, it’s worth pondering what the long-term outcome will be once the recession finally ends. There’s been plenty written about a new frugality, with consumers changing their ways for good, and saving more and spending less. I haven’t totally signed on to that one. If the economy should somehow pick up, I think many consumers could easily revert to their old free spending habits. They always have in the past.

But when you think about much more limited access to credit — no more using your house as an ATM — combined with higher college costs, it’s a different story. We could very well end up with lower and middle income families finding college simply out of reach. That’s not something being watched closely right now, given our attention is focused on the banking and foreclosure crises.

The authors of the Chronicle piece –Joseph Marr Cronin, the former Massachusetts secretary of educational affairs, and Howard E. Horton, the president of New England College of Business and Finance – suggest it’s time to start. They’re trying to call this bubble before it bursts – which means at least one lesson from this financial crisis is sinking in, at least for some.