....Christopher Penn....the guy who runs FinancialAidPodcast.com . This is the anti-Collinge.
But first a little background. Penn works for the Student Loan Network. They're a Boston area based student lending organization. They have an iteresting spin. The Student Loan Network focuses all of their advertising/marketing/promotion on educating potential customers on the product, the process, on why....all that good stuff. Of course they always steer you to their services, but hey, it's a great idea. They immediately establish trust by positioning themselves as an advocate of the potential customer.
But they do a pretty good job of keeping their self-promotion to a minimum and the information they disseminate is excellent.
In fact, there has already been a Christopher Penn vs Alan Collinge encounter. Collinge appeared as a guest on Penn's podcast. We haven't listened yet, but will do so once this is posted. But check out today's podcast: it's Penn appealing to lawmakers to be reasonable. Go Chris!
Showing posts with label financial aid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial aid. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Tsk, Tsk, Tsk.
In an earlier post, we hypothesized that there were a few bad apples in the financial aid office barrel. It turns out that there are probably a quite a few more than a few. But to redeem CollegeLoanSearch, we also predicted that Andrew Cuomo's investigation would find more ugliness.
So far, Coumo seems to be consumed with CIT's Student Loan Xpress unit. In their defense, it seems that CIT cleaned up the act when they bought Education Lending Group (the previous owner of Student Loan Express) in 2005. All the allegations unearthed so far were the result of pre-CIT ownership.
What we find suspicious is that no other student loan company has been identified yet. We think there's a doozy out there that will be unvieled any day now. Time will tell here.
But the industry isn't full of sleezy, back-room hucksters. There are scores of well-managed, highly-ethical student loan firms that continue to operate. The same goes for the university financial aid community. Sure there's some ill-behaved parties out there....but for the most part, everyone is operating in an honest, open manner.
We'd like to see the industry make a statement to such. Most lenders are doing good -- they are enabling people to attain a higher education. The ill-behaved actors need to face consequences, but the industry needs to take responsbility and promote themselves as providing a valuable service. Because Andrew Cuomo surely isn't going to serve as the industry spokes person. And he's far from finished here.
So far, Coumo seems to be consumed with CIT's Student Loan Xpress unit. In their defense, it seems that CIT cleaned up the act when they bought Education Lending Group (the previous owner of Student Loan Express) in 2005. All the allegations unearthed so far were the result of pre-CIT ownership.
What we find suspicious is that no other student loan company has been identified yet. We think there's a doozy out there that will be unvieled any day now. Time will tell here.
But the industry isn't full of sleezy, back-room hucksters. There are scores of well-managed, highly-ethical student loan firms that continue to operate. The same goes for the university financial aid community. Sure there's some ill-behaved parties out there....but for the most part, everyone is operating in an honest, open manner.
We'd like to see the industry make a statement to such. Most lenders are doing good -- they are enabling people to attain a higher education. The ill-behaved actors need to face consequences, but the industry needs to take responsbility and promote themselves as providing a valuable service. Because Andrew Cuomo surely isn't going to serve as the industry spokes person. And he's far from finished here.
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