Less than a week after the College Board announced it was getting out of the federal government’s student-loan program, three Connecticut colleges stand accused of accepting discounted software in return for listing the College Board as one of their preferred lenders.

Connecticut’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, said the three institutions — Fairfield University, Sacred Heart University, and Trinity College — have signed agreements in which they promise to end such arrangements and to pay a total of $75,000 to various scholarship funds.

All three colleges had been telling their students that they placed the College Board and other lenders on their “preferred-lender lists” solely because they believed the lenders offered students the best benefits, Mr. Blumenthal’s office said in a written statement.

Mr. Blumenthal’s investigation found, however, that all three colleges had signed agreements in which placement on the preferred-lender list was a condition for the colleges to receive discounts on financial-aid software.

All three colleges reached voluntary agreements with Mr. Blumenthal and Connecticut’s commissioner of consumer protection, Jerry Farrell Jr., in which they promised to end such arrangements, without admitting any wrongdoing.

Mr. Blumenthal also announced an agreement with the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges in which the group’s 17 members agreed to prohibit themselves and their staff members from accepting compensation from lenders. The ban includes any lodging, meals, or travel to conferences or training seminars valued at more than $50. The restrictions are similar to the “code of conduct” that New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, already has signed with more than two dozen colleges. —Paul Basken