This benefit is available for pass-through entities, such as partnerships and S corps, as well as traditional C corporations. (Pass-throughs pass on their taxable income and tax credits to their individual investors' tax returns.).
So even though the loans were guaranteed by the federal government, we were still paying banks billions of dollars to be pass-throughs for the student loan program.
Obviously, such leverage has security implications not the least for the useful role it may play in inducing increasingly "independent" nations of its former empire to play the role of pass-throughs of Western technology and know-how.