HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Who Could Have Seen This Coming? “The Education Department has grown into one of the biggest money lenders in the country, overseeing a $1.2 trillion portfolio of student debt rivaling the entire loan business of JPMorgan Chase with a staff roughly the size of the National Weather Service. But instead of fulfilling a presidential mission of remaking and simplifying a confusing and corrupt system that enriched financial firms at the expense of taxpayers — and ultimately the nation’s college students — serious problems have emerged.”