WARWICK — Rhode Island college students and their families have long relied on the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority, a quasi-public, nonprofit agency, to give them unbiased information about financial aid and low-interest loans. But when they have turned to the authority’s free College Planning Center over the past three years, students and parents have unknowingly been speaking to employees of one of the nation’s largest private, for-profit lenders, Nelnet.

Yesterday, General Treasurer Frank Caprio, who is a member of RISLA’s board, called on the authority to stop their arrangement with Nelnet, calling it “a potential conflict of interest.” He asked them to “build a firewall” between the nonprofit College Planning Center and the for-profit Nelnet.

“RISLA needs to move quickly to reassure the public that the center is a resource for reliable information and is managed by public officials who are accountable to the people of Rhode Island, not an out-of-state loan provider,” Caprio said in a statement.

Caprio also mentioned a national investigation of Nelnet and other private lenders for unethical practices. These include paying colleges fees for securing a place on the preferred lender list, offering college officials stocks and other gifts, and staffing college financial-aid call centers without telling student callers they are speaking to a representative of a private lending company.

RISLA and Nelnet’s Rhode Island company, the New England Student Loan Authority, said yesterday that those practices were not occurring in Rhode Island.

However, RISLA officials said they have been talking about dissolving the planning center arrangement for about nine months. RISLA’s executive director, Noel Simpson, said this is not because of appearances, but because RISLA wants to expand the services the center offers throughout the state, such as help writing college-entrance essays, filling out financial-aid forms and offering free SAT preparation courses for low-income students.

Anthony J. Santoro, RISLA’s board chairman, said he would recommend RISLA resume control of the nine-year-old College Planning Center at its next meeting, scheduled at 9 a.m. May 18, at the authority’s Warwick headquarters, 560 Jefferson Blvd. RISLA has been paying Nelnet $300,000 a year to run the program.

“We will put up a wall so there is no confusion,” Santoro said. “Of course we are worried about the publicity, and we don’t want it to damage what we think is a valuable resource for Rhode Islanders.”

NEBRASKA-BASED NELNET came to Rhode Island three years ago, seeking a foothold in the lucrative Southern New England college market.

In a complex deal approved by the state, RISLA agreed to sell the private company $175 million worth of the authority’s $800 million in student loans for $5 million RISLA also sold its future federal student loans to Nelnet for 10 years and contracted with Nelnet to originate and market private loans for another $8 million.

Lawmakers and higher education officials praised the deal, saying the $13 million would go into the state scholarship program.

RISLA officials were relieved to be unloading a portion of their loans and said they preferred Nelnet to other aggressive lenders who had been involved in scandals, such as Sallie Mae. Since then, Nelnet, too, has been involved in several federal investigations.

“There was a great deal of consolidation going on three years ago, and we were concerned that RISLA, being a very small agency by comparison, might not survive,” said Santoro. “We thought it would be good to form a partnership with a private company. Right or wrong, we thought we were protecting those low-interest rate loans.”

The loan business is booming. Since 2005, RISLA’s loan volume has grown to $513 million and Nelnet’s New England Student Loan Authority’s loan volume has reached $424 million, Simpson said.

Most of RISLA’s employees — 22 out of 25 — were also swapped in the deal and promised jobs for three years, including Charles Kelly, named the executive director of the New England Student Loan Authority. Kelly made $116,000 as head of RISLA. Nelnet told former RISLA employees they would earn the same or more with the private loan company. Kelly confirmed his pay went up after the deal but declined to say how much in a phone interview yesterday.

Kelly defended the relationship between RISLA and his Nelnet-owned company, saying the College Planning Center gave students information on low-interest rate loans that are hard to get elsewhere, and that Nelnet did not unfairly promote its loans.

RISLA officials say the deal also stipulated that Nelnet would take over the running of the College Planning Center, a detail not included in copies of the contract provided to The Journal in 2004, as the deal was being finalized.

RISLA has paid Nelnet $300,000 a year to run the center, essentially paying the salaries of a director and about four to five part-time employees who used to work for RISLA, Simpson said.

RISLA’s board of directors now hopes to hire those people back, Santoro said.

GENERAL TREASURER CAPRIO said he is considering developing a student loan code of conduct, similar to the one created by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, which is designed to prevent improper relationships between schools and lenders.

“All over the country, questions are being raised about potential conflicts of interest between student loan providers and financial aid advisers,” Caprio said in his statement.

jjordan@projo.com