Cuomo Forms Student-Loan Center With Settlement Money

And while mkant69 hits one nail right on the head, I’ll swing at the next nail. The agency that will be operating this call center, NYHESC, former FFELP guaranty agency and part of Cuomo’s own government, is also a private loan lender. I thought the best way to avoid conflicts of interest was to avoid even the appearance or possibility thereof. A lender giving “unbiased” advice on where to borrow…doesn’t quite pass the smell test, Andrew.

Probably it was inevitable that some lender (NYHESC) manaqed to lever in to a center for supplying unbiased advice for students and families. The best that can be hoped is that the pressures of this center being founded out of settlement money arising from a corruption lawsuit might make those involved less inclined or able to be handing out misleading information.

The problem is of course that the bushels of lucre to be made from student borrowing are still beckoning and that despite the move to federal loans and away from the subsidized or private loans. And on the horizon it is very probable that any reforms put through during the first years of Obama’s administration will soon be gutted or co-opted. So it is quite likely there will be a far amount of below the scenes rushing by the edudebt industry to position themselves back into influence awaiting the restoration of their system.

And as far as the implication of financial aid officers being unworthy of trust, individual officers may be ethical and have the students best interests in mind. However the corruption inherent to the student lending industry has only been washed back by the NYS case, and recent reforms not properly corrected the problems. For example in venues outside the NY courts influence, posters implying that the school and lenders were one are still up (as at my institution despite the move to direct lending) and some schools still use lenders as support services in processing paperwork.

So Coumo certainly did not handle this matter well, and NYHESC’s involvement in a advice center arises suspicions. But academe itself has not freed it’s temples from the harlots and moneysellers which it mistakenly allowed in…and those moneysellers and harlots have unfortunately had a long term case of moral syphillis which is has not been fully cured.

And continental Europe has the augustly titled rector magnificus (men) and rectrix magnifica (women).

I was a student at Queen’s University in Canada, which retains the title of Principal for the CEO.

Not too long after I left the Claremont Graduate School (part of the Claremont Colleges, located in, of all places, Claremont CA) back in the middle 1990′s, they decided to promote themselves to become the Claremont Graduate University. The major effect, as far as I could tell (comments from other CGS faculty alumni welcomed), was that everyone’s title got jumped up one rank. Thus “departments” in the “school” became “schools” in the “university”. Department chairs became Deans; the Dean became a Provost. “Directors” of things were still mostly “directors”, however, and (being on the lower end of the scale) “students” remained “students”. Perhaps they should have all become “distinguished scholars” or perhaps “epiphanoids” (seekers of epiphanies?). On the other hand, my current institution (being at the time in the grip of an Evil Wizard, since vanquished) made a run at abolishing all faculty ranks, making everyone either a “professor” or an “instructor”. The eventual compromise appears to have been to retain faculty ranks (full, associate, etc.) as properties of the individual faculty member, while retaining the two classes as types of positions, an arrangement best explained by Evil HR Directors.The Moral of this Tale, if there is one, is probably that you might as well promote your title to the degree possible, since the nominal equivalent of grade inflation is gradually eating away at all titles. There’s a certain “tragedy of the commons” element in this process, but it’s hard to fault anyone for accepting an inflated title in a world where this has become the norm. New! Improved! Now with bleach! Etc.

I am a little bit surprised by reading that “higher education around the world” count only UK and USA. And that the “four year undergraduate degree” is a standard. Which is not the case in UK and in the other 42 countries of the Bologna process.