next »

[bbaicad]

Today's article on the growing financial aid scandal included the following sentence: "Some of those directors complained that the USDE and NASFAA should have been giving them much clearer advice on ethical pitfalls over the past several years," followed by this quote "There has been a lack of guidance that has allowed people to go down a questionable path," from a student aid director.

This is the most astounding thing I've read in many years!  Certainly at its most extreme level, no one should have needed a warning about the ethics of receiving personal benefits in exchange for advantageous treatment.  At its milder level, the fact that some people thought some of this was "questionable" should have been setting off personal alarms throughout higher ed.  I can't believe that experienced fiinancial aid directors (wasn't that why they were hired?) needed outside advice about what's in the best interests of their students.  And they don't seem embarrassed by this lack of moral compass either!

Stunned, Bill Barrett
Executive Director, AICAD 

[mountain_ivy]

I'm going to risk creeping out on a very thin limb.  25 or 30 years ago, there wasn't big money in most colleges, with the exception of the GI Bill.  Collegiate staff/administrators tended to come to a college and stay there or move to another school.  Today, college=big money, especially in student financial aid and IT.  Therefore, colleges are looking for outsiders with big money experience.  These folks tend to come from the private sector, and may have less committment to the college and its mission (please notice all my caveats).  Additionally, there is an increasing divide in administration between the academic side and the business side, with the latter assuming more importance.  I suspect that if we looked hard enough, we'd find financial mismanagement and personal enrichment in other areas of academic institutions where big money is involved:  IT; construction; and endowments.