Washington — A top aide to New York’s attorney general indicated today that his office would make public within two months the results of its investigation into banks that are co-branding credit cards with universities — and people will be “shocked” at some arrangements.

The remarks came during a wide-ranging forum, held here at the American Enterprise Institute, on the topic “Higher Ed Governance: Stewardship or Sham?”

The event was billed as a look at the role of college-trustee oversight in preventing campus controversies that have made national headlines, such as last year’s student-loan scandal. While several panelists acknowledged that trustees should be more attentive in overseeing their colleges, the speakers summarily rejected the notion that higher-education governance was a “sham.”

Well placed to comment on the ongoing inquiry on student loans was Benjamin M. Lawsky, deputy counsel to New York’s attorney general, who remarked on the “bottleneck power” universities have come to wield over which companies and organizations can have exclusive access to their students. He insisted that while campus administrators are not bad, they are like “sitting ducks” to companies that seek some form of preferred status as a way of generating business.

That was the case with student-loan companies his office investigated last year, and it is the case with the credit-card arrangements his office is now investigating, Mr. Lawsky said. Such deals have sent millions of dollars to colleges and universities, he said.

“I think people will be shocked at some of these arrangements,” he said. —JJ Hermes