The attorney general of New York is investigating the University of Nebraska at Lincoln over a possible violation of a law that bars lenders from offering colleges or borrowers inducements to secure loan applications.

News of the investigation, which was first reported on Thursday by the Daily Nebraskan, the university’s student newspaper, and then again today by the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public-policy institute, comes as Congress and the Education Department are considering tightening the inducements ban.

At issue is a deal the university’s Board of Regents struck in 2004 with Nelnet, a national student-loan provider with headquarters in Lincoln, Neb. Under the terms of that partnership, the regents agreed to drop out of the federal direct-loan program and start making loans directly to its graduate students through the school-as-lender program. The university would then sell the loans to Nelnet for a profit.

At the time the deal was forged, the Nebraska University Foundation owned 842,417 shares of Nelnet stock that it had received eight years earlier as a gift from the W.E. Barkley Trust, an entity affiliated with Nelnet. According to the Daily Nebraskan, some regents said they were not informed of the university’s stock holdings when they approved the arrangement.

The university is one of 60 colleges being investigated by the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, over allegations that student-loan providers have encouraged campus financial-aid administrators to steer borrowers their way.