UM undergrads have, it is said, the highest indebtedness of any students in the USA. (It must be more than the high tuition — something about the lifestyle….)
Which makes it all more important for some local student journalist to find out if there is a local angle to this national story about student lenders and their sweetheart deals with college loan officers. The idea was to seduce or bribe the loan officers into steering student borrowers to certain companies, rather than those with the best deals. The New York Times has had a series of stories about these dubious deals (here's the latest), concentrating on NY area universities.
What I want to know is whether anything like that happened here at UM. Not that I have the least fact to suggest that it did. But given the size of the student body and its propensity for debt, we do seem like a natural market for that sort of thing. Were university loan officers contacted? If so, did they give in to blandishment or take the high road?
