Students are always complaining about college fees increasing, but few of us know the reasoning behind such decisions. We figure that our money will be put to good use, improving the school in some way, perhaps by luring better professors, allowing for more supplies or funding campus beautification projects. Well, students at three of the top universities in the country now have that answer.
According to an article in the April 11 issue of The New York Times, officials at the University of Texas, Fordham University and the nearby University of Southern California all received shares of stock from the president of the student loan company, Student Loan Xpress.
Lawrence Burt of the University of Texas denies that the stocks were gifts, but instead insists that they were legally purchased. Not only were these university officials in the upper echelon of the campus hierarchy, they were all the directors of financial aid.
Regardless, university officials having ties to loan companies in any way, whether it is a legitimate stake in a company as a shareholder or accepting “gifts” from these student loan companies, is reprehensible. The people deciding how much student fees go up should not be able to profit from their decision.
But the list of officials receiving gifts from the loan company doesn’t end there. According to the article, at least one official in the Education Department received shares of stock from the student loan company.
You have to hand it to them though, the company is pretty smart covering all its bases. It has university administrators presumably advocating raising student fees or creating tougher regulations on which students qualify for financial aid. It is bribing people in the Education Department who are capable of passing favorable legislation.
According to the Web site for the U.S. Department of Education, among the things the department is responsible for is “establishing policies on federal financial aid for education, and distributing as well as monitoring those funds,” and according to The New York Times article, the government official who had received the gift from the student loan company “helps oversee lenders in the federal student loan program.”
These are not the kind of people you want to be in favor of student loan companies.
Sadly, other kinds of corruption within professions once thought to be beacons of morality have been cropping up lately. Doctors have recently been shown accepting bribes from pharmaceutical companies and unnecessarily increasing dosage of medicines for patients. Even an astronaut, one of those people we all looked up to as children and aspired to be one day, has been accused of attempting to kidnap someone.
This kind of collaboration between loan companies and universities is completely reprehensible. Now that these bribes and gifts have been discovered, some drastic form of punishment must happen to these administrators, and it needs to happen soon, because even educators needs detention every once in awhile.
