The president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators sent a letter today to Andrew M. Cuomo, the attorney general of New York, demanding an apology for his comments last Thursday in a news release and letter to college presidents.

In both documents, Mr. Cuomo accused financial-aid administrators of accepting kickbacks from lenders in exchange for inclusion on their institutions’ lists of preferred lenders — a practice that is illegal. “There is an unholy alliance between banks and institutions of higher education that may often not be in the students’ best interest,” Mr. Cuomo wrote in the news release.

In a three-page response, the student-aid group’s president, Dallas M. Martin, said such statements had done financial-aid administrators “a great disservice and dishonored their good names.”

“I expect a prompt and public apology from you for your unwarranted character assassination of public servants who only want to do what is best for their students and their families,” he wrote.