I love this guy!

Nearly every college student who has borrowed money to pay tuition over the past decade can thank Mark Kantrowitz for helping to make the process easier and cheaper.

Mr. Kantrowitz isn't a banker or a Washington bureaucrat. Working from his cluttered basement outside of Pittsburgh, he is the gadfly of the student-lending business, poking and prodding Washington and private-sector student lenders to make college more affordable, especially to lower-income students.

…Now, at a time when the government is taking over the private side of the federal student-loan business—amid skyrocketing tuition and swelling student debt—Mr. Kantrowitz is having something of a Lady Gaga moment. Members of Congress, the Department of Education, lenders and financial-aid administrators seek out his advice. His testimony in April 2008 before the Senate Banking Committee on the credit crunch in student loans helped lead to legislation that temporarily provided much-needed cash to education lenders and prevented a potential meltdown of the student-loan industry.

Just last week, he testified on a report issued by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which advises Congress and the secretary of education on financial-aid policy. His argument: Unless need-based grant aid is sharply increased, the number of people graduating with bachelor's degrees will decline.

…Mr. Kantrowitz sees an impending crisis unfolding in the next decade or two. "We're going to start hitting a situation where today's students will still be in debt when their own children are enrolling in college," he says. "If the current trends continue, families will soon be at a breaking point."

From his perspective, the most efficient way to increase college access is to provide more aid to low- and moderate-income students. The Obama administration has taken steps in that direction, such as raising Pell Grant limits to a maximum of $5,550. Mr. Kantrowitz says those limits need to be roughly doubled.

…"It gives you a very good feeling knowing that you are helping millions of people pursue a college education," he says. "I think that is a more valuable and more beneficial result than building a better Web search engine."

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