A private student-loan company that had invited financial-aid administrators to the Caribbean for an all-expenses-paid “Education Summit” has canceled the conference, citing “confusion and minisformation” about its purpose.

In a letter sent today to conference attendees, George Pappas, senior vice president of EduCap Inc., which does business as Loan to Learn, said the decision had been made “in light of recent inaccurate reports in the media regarding the financial-aid community and the unfortunate perception these reports have created.”

“Considerable confusion and misinformation exist about the purpose of the summit that was scheduled in February,” Mr. Pappas continued. “The goal of the conference was to foster an informed, thoughtful discussion about creating an educated citizenry.”

He noted that 80 percent of those who responded to a September 5 invitation to the summit were not financial-aid officials.

Loan to Learn is not the first lending company to pay financial-aid administrators’ way to a conference. But the large price tag of the trip — $3,000 per person by some estimates — had raised eyebrows among administrators, some of whom saw it as an attempt to buy access to colleges “preferred lender” lists.

While federal student-loan law prohibits colleges from requiring students to borrow from a specific bank, many institutions suggest certain “preferred lenders,” and those are the ones that students usually choose. For that reason, lenders fight vigorously to be put on a college’s preferred list.