One student loan company took university financial aid directors on a junket to Disney World. Another paid $500 to be placed on a school’s list of recommended lenders. And others showered tequila, wine and golf outings on college aid officers.
Those were among what Senate investigators called illegal enticements from loan companies to university officials to [...]

Johns Hopkins University has agreed to pay $1.125 million to settle a probe of its student loan practices, the New York attorney general said Thursday.
The settlement is the latest in a nationwide probe of conflicts of interest in the $85 billion student loan industry. Twenty-six schools and seven lenders, including Sallie Mae , JPMorgan Chase [...]

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo urged Congress to step up supervision of private education lending and said he is widening his investigation of the $85 billion-a-year industry to examine loan criteria.
Private lending is more subject to abuse because it isn’t covered by anti kickback rules in government loan programs, Cuomo told the Senate’s banking [...]

If you plan to graduate from college this spring, your mailbox may soon be filled with congratulatory cards from family friends, checks from distant relatives and reminders from your alma mater that your diploma will be rescinded unless you pay your overdue parking tickets. But if you borrowed to pay for college, much of your [...]

Sallie Mae Senior Vice President Barry Goulding today testified at the Senate Banking Committee hearing, ‘Paying for College: The Role of Private Student Lending’ to demonstrate how Sallie Mae serves students and parents in the private education loan market.
Goulding emphasized Sallie Mae’s ‘1-2-3 approach’ to paying for college: 1) after tapping personal financial resources such [...]

OneSimpleLoan® http://www.OneSimpleLoan.com, a student loan finance and consulting firm specializing in student loan consolidation, today announced that President & CEO Paul J. Simino is a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® 2007 Award in the Florida region. According to Ernst & Young, the awards program was designed to recognize outstanding entrepreneurs [...]

You’ve got the college degree, and now you’re stressed about what do to with the debt.
“Even if your student loans exceed your annual salary — which is, unfortunately, a common phenomenon these days — you can knock down those debts and start to regain control of your financial life,” says Lynnette Khalfani in her new [...]

Starting July 1, interest rates for older Stafford and PLUS loans will rise 0.08 percentage points. For borrowers of the need-based Stafford loans who are still in school, interest rates will rise to 6.62 percent, while PLUS loan rates will rise to 8.02 percent, according to student-loan provider Sallie Mae. For those who have already [...]

CIT Group said yesterday that the president of its Student Loan Xpress unit, which has been the focus of investigations into allegations of influence peddling in the $85 billion-a-year college-loan industry, has left the company.
The executive, Fabrizio Balestri, had been placed on leave in April and is “no longer with the company,” said Curt Ritter, [...]

Despite a growing number of options to finance a college education, students and parents are increasingly turning to loans.
Not only are students borrowing more money, but more of them are borrowing, according to data compiled by Nebraska’s Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education.
The news doesn’t sit well with Carna Pfeil, the commission’s associate director, who is [...]