Dirty, deceptive and surprising student lending!

I bet you'll be surprised about how studentloans REALLY work. Here's what I mean.
On Monday, NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced a settlement with the College Board over its former loan practices.

That's right, that's the same College Board that tortures high schoolers with the SAT, the CSS/Profile financial aid form and other familiar items. Apparently the Board was making money from sources otherthan test registration fees, like lending to students.

Attorney General Cuomo had a problem with the way in which the College Board was conducting this business.

Mario's Number One Son found that the College Board gave discounts to certain colleges, breaks related to prices paid by the financialaid offices for software and other services.

How did these colleges earn this special pricing from the College Board? By placing College Board loansin their list of recommended, or "preferred" lenders.

In other words, the College Board was alleged to have"bribed" (my word, not Cuomo's) these colleges into advertising the student loans offered by the College Board.

"Loans are hard enough to come by these days; thelast thing we need are deceitful arrangements likethis one that stand squarely in the way of students and parents getting the facts," said Cuomo.

And I bet you thought the company that issues the SAT was a non-profit or educational institution, right?

Nope, they're in business like everyone else involved in higher education. They're out to make a buck.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course. College Pete and I make a nice living advising parents of college-bound kids how to slash their college expenses. Everyone is entitled to make a few dollars (no matter who is President)!

The real issue is the deceptive manner in which the College Board, and the colleges themselves, allegedly made their money (they admitted no wrongdoing, not surprisingly).

When you go to apply to college, understand the main point made by this blog - that college is a BUSINESS.

This knowledge should effect almost everything you do regarding your student's college education, including where you apply for admission, how you apply for financial aid, how you apply for other scholarships and how you negotiate a financial aid award letter, among others.

If you don't understand this, you're setting yourself up to over-pay needlessly for your student's college education. You could be forcing your son or daughterto attend a "cheaper," less-desireable college than if you paid attention to the business of college.

This is exactly what we talk about in our free community workshops, "How to Pay for College Without GoingBroke or Raiding (what's left of) Your Retirement Savings."

Tonight's is sold out but we have a few more in Miami,Weston, Boca Raton and Parkland in the next 7 days.After that, it's too late - we shut down for the year.

The workshop is for parents of college-bound students. If you have a college-bound Senior, you're on life support if you haven't done anything to prepare for college costs. If you have a Junior, know that this is the most critical year for college funding purposes. If you have a Sophomore, everything he or she does now leads up to Junior year, the most important year of high school.

If you have a friend who's struggling with howto pay for college, send them a link to this post and tell them about our workshops in Miami, Boca,Weston or Parkland, too! They'll like this email better than a lump of coal in their stocking, promise!

Registration info is at:
http://www.CollegePlanningAdvice.com/events