It's got a complex

"What are the messages of your U and its stated purpose?
They obviously want as much money as they can get from me and I think they're in a conspiratory relationship with Sallie Mae, Mohela, Bank of America and CitiBank."

The student who gave me this quote was obviously kidding, with a residual anger behind her words. At the time I thought this was a nice bit of humor, the same kind which has threaded through some of my interviews. The most rewarding part of this piece of text is that three weeks after I conducted the interview, the story broke that administrators high up in the financial aid departments of USC, Columbia and the University of Texas held stocks in the lenders they had been referring to students. The story follows below:

http://www.examiner.com/a-656872~Officials_at_Columbia__USC__UT_owned_stock_in_preferred_lenders.html

Here is another, from the New York Times, about Sallie Mae donating money to high school students for loan education programs. Ted Kennedy has high hopes for it. Kind of like when Phillip Morris gave money for kids' anti-smoking campaigns. Of course, my student loans are through Sallie Mae (quite the matronly name) too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/education/11loanscnd.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin

In addition to this, I stumbled across an author whose been writing on the funding of universities themselves. Jennifer Washburn wrote a book called University Inc: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education, which is an indictment of the lack of accountability of the way private money shapes the institutions. Pick up a copy of it if you can.