A Solution For Student Loan Conflict of Interest

To the editors:



Re: “Loaning and Betraying,” editorial, Apr. 25.

The current reliance on student loans to help pay for education leads to inevitable conflicts of interest. Using a traditional university financial aid office is like using GMAC to finance a GM car.

A variety of university students, alumni, and officials in the early nineteen eighties foresaw the inherent conflicts of interest in traditional financial aid offices.

Their solution was the creation of autonomous but university-affiliated financial aid entities whose boards would include only the payers of educational costs: parents, alumni, and students. From this concept emerged the student credit union initiative. Successful student credit unions have emerged at the University of Pennsylvania and at Georgetown University. These entities have prospered for over 20 years. Their potential will not be fully realized until they assume their logical mandate of administering student loans independent of the university. Such a financial office would enable the university to recuse itself from administering student loans.

As one who was intimately involved in this initiative in the nineteen eighties, I can testify, that all the Ivy League Universities resisted this initiative at the time with the exception of Penn. The presence of the undergraduate Wharton division provided a rationale for such a student, parent, and alumnus credit union: practical training in banking services on an undergraduate level.

Readers are welcome to visit the websites of these entities: sfcu.upenn.edu and www.guasfcu.com.

At the very least, these alternative loan offices would be fully accountable to their student, parent, and alumni members. Betrayal would be more difficult under such circumstances.



BOHDAN A. ORYSHKEVICH

New York

April 26, 2007



The writer is a former WK Kellogg Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health.