The director of student financial services at Johns Hopkins University has resigned — nearly a month after a nationwide probe of the student-loan industry revealed she was accepting fees and graduate-school tuition payments from a lender.

Ellen Frishberg, director of student financial services at the Homewood campus since 1989, resigned Friday, a university spokesman said.

She had been on paid administrative leave since April 9, after the university learned that Student Loan Xpress Inc., a student lender recommended by Frishberg’s office, had paid her about $65,000 in consulting fees and tuition payments between 2002 and 2006.

The announcement comes during a national investigation of the college-loan industry launched by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Since reports about Frishberg surfaced in April, Hopkins has adopted a code of conduct to govern relationships between universities and student-loan companies. The university also canceled all suggested lenders compiled for students and their families, a university spokesman said.

During the university’s investigation of Frishberg, she acknowledged taking payments from other lenders besides Student Loan Xpress Inc., but the lenders were not on Hopkins’ recommended lender list, the university said. Frishberg also acknowledged working on advisory committees for American Express, Sallie Mae and Student Loan Xpress.

Vince Pecora, director of financial services at Towson University, which as a direct lender does not provide lists of preferred lenders, said college loan officials have to be vigilant about relationships with lenders for the students’ sake.

“We want to be as knowledgeable as we can be about services that benefit the students and families we serve,” he said. “In order to do that we have to have interaction and information about the lenders. Of course we always have to be very mindful that there is a distance between those relationships.”

Information from: www.examiner.com

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 9:33 am and is filed under College Loans, Education News. Tags: College, Student, Student Loan, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.