Twenty years ago, a U.S. Senate aide walked into a bank in Maine and saw a sign that read "Take out a student loan today, get a toaster." The aide, concerned that students would be tempted to take out loans they did not need, drafted legislation barring lenders from offering "inducements" to borrow. That language was added to the Higher Education Act in 1986, and for the next two decades, the "toaster provision" remained a backwater of student-aid policy. That all changed in April, when New York State's attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, announced the first settlements stemming from his investigation into conflicts of interests in the student-loan industry. Suddenly, inducements are front-page news. Colleges and their alumni associations stand accused of taking kickbacks, financial-aid officers have been fired for accepting consulting fees and stock options from lenders, and the Education Department is being blamed for its lax oversight of the industry. This article discusses how 20 years of lenders' marketing strategies, from free toasters to kickbacks, gave birth to a scandal.