FAP519: Conference in review, NASFAA code of conduct, Boston scholarship, Sheila Swift
+ From : In light of the recent attention that has been given to the relationship between postsecondary institutions and student loan providers, NASFAA s Board of Directors spent considerable time at its April 21 - 23 meeting deliberating over the actions that it should take to address these matters. As an outcome, the Board approved a resolution announcing a plan of action to develop its own code of conduct within the next few weeks that will provide its members and their institutions explicit guidance in carrying out the expectations of the NASFAA Statement of Ethical Principles.
+ Comment from : The aid community and students are not served by these half-measures.
The ground is shifting beneath our feet, and NASFAA, like it or not, is our only real shot at explaining to the folks that control the pursestrings what the real story is in financial aid.
+ I seriously doubt that NASFAA will do anything except enter damage control mode to protect its own, after throwing a few bodies to the wolves. Unfortunately, this means we’ll have to live with the legislative consequences.
+ We should be explaining (now, while we have the public’s attention) how to make college more affordable to more students. Instead, we are distracted by the media themes of bad schools doing bad deals with bad lenders. (We better address this too, but’s it’s just a sideshow to the serious structural problems with the program.
)
+ The INEVITABLE changes in the status quo will be informed by our contributions as aid professionals. Either we give an honest appraisal of the problems, so our lawmakers can address them more effectively, or we fume about no one understanding this complicated business, try to protect our own bits of turf, and let the lawmakers change the law without our input.
+ Also from : Sen.
Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, sent a letter to higher education institution presidents across the country urging them to establish guidelines for their institution s relationships with lenders.
+ The letter highlights some of the practices that concern Kennedy, including college officials serving on lender boards and advisory boards, lender stock ownership by college officials, gifts from lenders to college officials, lender staff assisting schools with loan application processing, and college names and emblems placed on lender loan products.
+ Kennedy encourages institutions to avoid conflicts of interest with lenders and provides schools with guidance for avoiding conflicts of interest.
+ AIGA Boston is honored to offer a scholarship in memory of our colleague, Tim Moore.
+ Be a junior or senior in an accredited graphic arts program in New England, applying for a semester of study abroad.
+ An official scholarship application.
(Downloadable from the Printing and Publishing Council website, http://www.ppcne.org/scholarships_Moore.
html).
+ Willing to keep a sketchbook of your adventure abroad that will be submitted to the Board of Directors of AIGA Boston to be used at a future date as a possible fundraising tool.
+ Submit current transcripts, current registration forms from your school along with acceptance documents of your program abroad.
+ All applications must be submitted no later than April 30, 2007.
FAP518: State attorneys general banding together, live report from PESC, DC scholarship, Matthew Ebel
+ From : Duquesne University will no longer accept commissions from private student lenders; the result of a probe conducted by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
+ Duquesne got $16,000 from San Francisco-based Education Finance Partners, $10,000 from PNC Financial Group Inc.
[ticker: PNC], and $2,500 from Citizens Bank, all of which, the school says went toward student aid.
+ From : In recent days, the top legal officers in states like South Carolina, Mississippi and, to a lesser extent, Nebraska, have put themselves at odds with the New York attorney general s aggressive and increasingly expansive campaign to change the behavior of the industry on behalf, he says, of student borrowers and their families.
+ On Monday, though, the attorneys general in Illinois and Missouri explicitly locked arms with Cuomo.
They signed settlement agreements with colleges and universities in their states at which Cuomo had taken aim and vowed that they were just beginning their own efforts to help the students and parents of our states by reforming an industry that as we have learned over recent months needs reforming, as Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, said during a telephone news conference with Cuomo and Jay Nixon, her counterpart in Missouri.
+ As the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor prepares for a hearing tomorrow on the student loan issues at which Cuomo will be (as of this writing) the only witness, the panel s top Republican, Rep. Howard P.
(Buck) McKeon (R-Calif.) released details about legislation he plans to introduce to confront perceived student loan abuses at the federal level.
+ McKeon s Financial Aid Accountability Transparency Act would put in place at the national level some of the changes that Cuomo s code of conduct aims to institute state by state and institution by institution.
It would, for example, bar colleges and lenders from striking agreements in which lenders give colleges a cut of their loan volume, and require institutions to adopt a code of conduct that bars financial aid officers from receiving gifts, payments or other financial benefits from lenders and from receiving any fees, payments or financial benefits as compensation for serving on lenders advisory councils.
+ The McKeon legislation would also require colleges to disclose how they have selected the student loan providers that appear on their lists of preferred lenders, and insist that all such lists contain at least three non-affiliated lenders, which is what the U.S.
Education Department had recommended in proposed regulatory language that its officials offered as part of a negotiated rule making process that collapsed Friday, among other reasons, amid opposition from colleges to that provision.
+ From : Recent investigations have largely focused on incentives lenders give universities to get coveted placement on the preferred lending lists students use to take out loans when they enter college. But colleges also give lenders crucial access to students when they are graduating, using lenders to conduct exit counseling required under federal law for students who have taken out federally guaranteed student loans, reports The New York Times.
In some cases, loan company representatives come on campus and run sessions for seniors on loan repayment. In others, colleges direct students to loan company Web sites, including Wells Fargo, Citibank and Sallie Mae. And in many cases, the loan companies are pushing a product: their .
+ The U-M Alumni Club of Washington, DC offers a $25,000 ($6,250 per year) scholarship to promising High School Seniors from the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area who will be attending the University of Michigan.
+ The scholarship is renewable for four years.
+ Not sure if I should name names or not!
+ Again, as I ve said for some time, the folks I m meeting with are honest, ethical people - we ve had a number of discussions about conflicts of interest
+ Attendance of the conference is down about 40% - again, avoiding conflict of interest since the conference has sponsorships by lenders
+ What will happen to future financial aid conferences?
Maybe there s a future for FinancialAidCamp after all, since unconferences are one of the lowest cost methods of having a conference
+ As federal student loan lending gets harder and more restrictive, the consensus is that and will become dominant, since they re not subject to state or federal oversight
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