A U.S. Education Department official and student-aid administrators at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Southern California, and Columbia University bought shares of stock in a student-loan company “at a significant discount” from the actual price, an investigation by the office of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has discovered.

The department official, Matteo Fontana, and the three college administrators — David Charlow of Columbia, Catherine C. Thomas of Southern Cal, and Lawrence W. Burt of Texas — were placed on leave after reports last week that they owned shares in 2003 in Education Lending Group Inc., then the parent of Student Loan Xpress.

Senator Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a letter last night to the Securities and Exchange Commission that he had found that the four officials in late 2001 acquired the shares of Student Loan Xpress, known at that time as Direct III Marketing Inc., from the current president of Student Loan Xpress, Fabrizio Balestri.

The four officials bought the shares from Mr. Balestri “at a significant discount to their market value, and at least one of the financial-aid administrators apparently paid Mr. Balestri in cash,” Senator Kennedy said today in a statement.

“Strangely, Mr. Balestri later sent a ‘Memorandum of Gift’ to each of the recipients of the stock, purporting to show that he had given them the shares for free — in fact, all had bought the shares from him at the significantly discounted price,” said Senator Kennedy, who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Also today, Rep. George Miller of California, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, wrote to CIT Group, which bought Student Loan Xpress in 2005, requesting information about the company’s relationships with college financial-aid offices. —Paul Basken