Andrew Cuomo’s “Code of Conduct” Plan: The Best Attempt To Stop “Predatory Lending” In the Student Loan Industry

If you are a parent of a college bound student or a student trying to finance your education on your own, you owe it to yourself to throughly investigate Andrew Cuomo’s campaign to expose and indict the student lending industry. This information could save you thousands of dollars and millions of headaches!

In June of 2008, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York outlined and implemented a Code of Conduct plan for the 6 largest student loan lenders. Cuomo’s characterization of Student Loan lending institutions as purveyors of “predatory lending” practices is the most accurate and hard hitting characterizations of the industry by a politician yet.

Cuomo’s plan includes the following 7 provisions:

1. Ban on Financial Ties. Lenders are prohibited from giving anything of value to any college in exchange for any advantage sought by the lender. This severs any inappropriate financial arrangements between lenders and schools and specifically prohibits “revenue sharing” arrangements.

2. Ban on Payments for Preferred Lender Status. Lenders may not pay or give colleges any financial benefits whatsoever to get on a college’s preferred lender list.

3. Gift and Trip Prohibition. Lenders are prohibited from giving college employees anything of more than nominal value. This includes a prohibition on trips for financial aid officers and other college officials paid for by lenders.

4. Advisory Board Rules. Lenders are prohibited from paying college employees anything of value for serving on the advisory boards of the lenders.

5. Call-Center and Staffing Prohibition. Lenders must ensure that employees of lenders never identify themselves to students as employees of colleges. No employee of a lender may ever work in or providing staffing assistance to a college financial aid office.

6. Disclosure of Range of Rates and Defaults. Lenders must disclose to any requesting school the range of rates they charge to students at the school, the number of borrowers at each rate at the school, and the lender’s historic default rate at the school. This will ensure that schools will have the information they need to select preferred lenders who are best for students and their families.

7. Loan Resale Disclosure. Lenders shall fully and prominently disclose to students and their parents any agreements they have to sell loans to any other lender.

Look at these provisions carefully. Would you want to collaborate or become a customer of an organization that is being reprimanded for provisions 2 and 3. Essentially these are rules against kickbacks. Does it not make sense to search for an alternative to the stratospheric, exorbitant costs of college tuition loans?

What would you rather have as your plan to finance a student’s education:

High interest rate and long term loans that create financial unrest for your family for years or a financial plan that allows you to take advantage of the millions of dollars of government financial aid that goes untapped every year?

Filed under: Admissions, Banks, College Financing, Consultants, Graduation, Major, Med School, Out of State Tuition, Parental Guidance, Public Service, Recruitment, Refinance, Scandal, Scholarship, Students, Tuition, Universities , Andrew Cuomo, Choosing Universities, college expenses, College Financing, college funding, financial aid, Financial Plans, Predatory Lending, self help, student financial aid, student loans, Tuition

Students and Parents Be Aware: The Newest Form Of Financing Is Not Financing At All

The newest form of financing is not financing at all. If this statement does not intrigue you then you are ignoring what could be the best strategy to fund the college education from the university of your choice. Bay College Planners has strategies to help families “reposition” their wealth-income in order for them to qualify for vast scholarship monies available every year.

This is not financing a loan from a high interest rate, disreputable banking source. This is not placing you the student in hock up to your ears for years to come.

The video report features one of our affiliates in San Diego. But the message is the same: we can help you attain scholarship monies without going into debt for years to come.

For questions please contact Bay College Planners’ Dan Evertsz or Gerna Benz.

Filed under: Admissions, Applications, Banks, Classes, College Financing, Consultants, Graduate School, Graduation, Major, Parental Guidance, Refinance, Scandal, Scholarship, Students, Tuition , college expenses, College Financing, college funding, financial aid, money, Scholarships, student financial aid, Tuition

Bay College Planners: Reposition Your Family’s Future, Fund Your Child’s College Education

In today’s world of financing for a college education, the awesome and frightening reality for many students and parents are the lack of solid tuition financing alternatives. The main method of paying for an education., outside full athletic scholarships or parents who can afford to pay without discomfort, are student loans through finance companies bent on creating an interest rate windfall–to your detriment.

In step with the high interest rates and never ending loan pay off dates is the fact that college tuitions are simply a rip off. There is very little competition or what analysts call downward pressure on college tuition pricing.

In a good example of this problem, Paul Streitz’s article “The Great American College Tuition Rip Off” outlines how parents and students push for higher education at the best colleges. This demand is manipulated by those colleges that receive the highest rankings from the US News and World Reports. US News and World Reports rankings have long been a respected measuring stick to parents and students helping them identify the best institutions.

Streitz posits that without tuition price competition from equally rated universities, and with demand escalating, universities will continue to raise tuitions.

These cost increases are not caused by spiraling administration costs, professor salaries, or any cost of doing business factors. Instead the true explanation is simple: universities can and do raise tuition fee because students and parents are willing to pay the costs without question.

How do students receive academic scholarships when their parents economic standing disqualifies them from aid? And how do parents whose main assets are in property and whose income is just enough to keep their household afloat help pay for their student’s educations? Is it possible to “requalify” these families in such a way as to make them eligible for financial aid after all? The answer to the last question is a resounding YES!

Right now is the right time to look for alternatives to the traditional loan rip offs. Now is the time to investigate and engage with a new method to pay for college. Now is the time to contact College Planning Specialists.

College Planning Specialists provides a number of valuable services which in whole bring a new alternative to the traditional problem of qualifying for financial aid. The professionals at CPS Dan Evertsz and Gerna Benz provide expert analysis and an action plan that helps non qualifying (financial aid) families qualify under aid guidelines.

CPS’s Service Checklist is comprised of 24 action steps when implemented have a positive effect on qualifying a family for the millions of dollars, that go unused each year, of financial aid available. The first step is to outline a complete financial overview and analysis of a family’s assets as they relate to college as well as their budget. Analysis of the family budget, taxes, retirement and other areas of financial management gives a clear picture as to the best steps to take.

During this analysis, CPS will calculate the family’s Estimated Family Contribution (EFC). This form is a way to calculate how much a family must pay outside of the financial aid package that they qualify to receive. It is CPS job to help families understand this process, do the calculations for the family, and most valuable-provide a plan/and or recommendations to reduce the Estimated Family Contribution.

Why worry about the EFC when most families do not qualify for financial aid due to their economic standing? In many many cases Dan and Gerna have been able to find avenues for families to qualify for financial aid. Almost all of these families never thought they would qualify, never knew where to go to investigate these alternatives, and have nothing to lose by going through the College Planning Specialists consultations.

For more information please contact this blog or stay tuned for the Part 2 in my series: Stop Servitude to Banks. . .

Filed under: Banks, College Financing, Scandal, Scholarship, Students, Tuition, Universities , academic quality, Career Path, Choosing Universities, College Applications, college expenses, College Financing, college funding, college students, financial aid, money, planning, Scholarships, Tuition

UC Berkeley’s “Branding” Solution: Consultants May Be Laughing All The Way To The Bank

The world of “consulting”, often referred to as unemployed, is one of the greatest uses of your skills, knowledge, and experience. Did I say experience? In the world of consulting, consultants present themselves as “experts.” It is entrepreneurial and it’s main requirement is that you have “expertise” in a specific field.

Your ability to bring this “expert” knowledge forward in a manner that is instructive is the major prerequisite to becoming a consultant-and hanging out your own shingle.

Case in point. The following story is true and it was reported in the October 11, 2007 San Francisco Chronicle “Bay Area” section of the paper-the headline reads:

“LAW SCHOOL DROPS BOALT, $25,000

“Officials at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law spent nearly $25,000 on a branding consultant to help them give the school a new name: ‘UC Berkely School of Law.’ . . . “Dean Christopher Edley Jr. said the money was-spent because people will now understand that the law school is tied to UC Berkeley.”

You mean to tell me one of the preeminent academic officials in one of the most respected universities in the world deemed it necessary to hire a “consultant” to formulate that brand name? How utterly absurd is the thought that all of this brainpower at the disposal of UC Berkeley through administrators, professors, and students was never tapped?

Analysis:

Why didn’t the UC Berkeley brains behind this branding move simply poll their professors, adminstration, alumni, and current students? Why not open it up as if it was a “Branding” contest: Winner receives a $10,000 grant?

Instead Marshall Strategy Inc. ( they look like college kids on the site) was handed a $200,000 contract to “design the school’s magazine, Web site and brochures for fundraising and student recruiting.” Within this $200 “large” was the $25k fee for the “name.”

Even more disturbing is the fact that UC Berkeley has allowed a wonderful opportunity in public relations and recruiting slip through it’s fingers. How great a tool would it be for the university to have tasked it’s Business school and Law school with the jobs of branding, media brochure materials, publicity, and marketing?

Why not give the consulting contract to it’s own students? Why not keep the money in-house? Why not use this type of project as a senior thesis which could provide real world experience a graduate could point to when interviewing for a position?

Finally why not bring the component of blogging into the picture? Blogging or citizen journalism would be a wonderful course that every business school should, unfortunately administration does not get it, provide in it’s curriculum.

Incredulous is the idea that anyone with half a brain could have come up with this “branded” moniker. What is wrong with this picture besides the fact that it must make every UC Berkeley student wonder where their hard earned tuition fees are being spent?

So there you have it in a nutshell. Consulting is a business and it is lucrative. It does not necessarily require brains or even expertise. It requires the skill of being able to sell even the most absurd idea to the smartest people without those smart people pushing back your idea.

Filed under: Banks, Branding, College Financing, Consultants, Graduate School, Major, Scandal, Students, Universities , Blogging, Career, Career Path, Career Search, Consultants, job search, life, self improvement, Social Networks