Academic greed

Perks for financial aid administrators may have left students with higher loan bills | Timothy Lamer

University administrators for decades have raised prices at a rate that would make anyone else—at least outside the health-care industry—blush ("No way down," Aug. 27, 2005). Somehow they have escaped the "greedy" label, with the public mind much more focused on "big oil" than on "big academia."

But this month has brought a sudden dose of accountability to at least a part of higher education financing. An investigation by Andrew Cuomo, New York's Democratic attorney general, revealed an often-cozy relationship between financial aid officers at universities and the companies that provide student loans. It's a relationship, Cuomo says, that hurts students.