What’s a Financial Aid Director to Do?

This article by Doug Ledermen featured in Inside Higher Education discusses the Financial Aid problems that many Financial Aid offices have recently come under fire for. Ledermen brings up many pertinent issues on the topic including how many Financial Aid offices have conflicting compliance troubles.

"Financial aid and lending officials in New York are far from alone in facing potential uncertainty over which requirements to abide by. More than a dozen state attorneys general have adopted their own codes of conduct, and virtually any student loan provider — and any college that enrolls students from New York — is technically covered by the SLATE law.

“If you have 5 or 10 or 15 different standards that institutions are being held to, that enormously complicates their efforts to comply, and results in the possibility of significant confusion,” says Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education. “At the end of the day, everybody is further ahead if the standards, rules and procedures are clear and widely understood.” (One university’s recent stab at comparing the differences among the many proposals out there can be found here.)"