Student Loan Blog : Sarah Lawrence College

New York AG Examines Colleges’ Relationships With Health Insurers

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:30:00 GMT

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the relationships between colleges and the health insurance companies they do business with just two years after he launched a similar investigation that uncovered conflicts of interest between some colleges and student loan companies, The New York Times reports (“Cuomo Investigating Colleges’ Deals With Health Insurers,” Nov. 17, 2008).

Investigators will focus on determining if schools adequately disclose the policy terms and costs of their school-sponsored health insurance plans to their students, as well as whether or not insurers offer schools a monetary incentive to require that their students buy health insurance through a particular provider.

In an e-mail message, Benjamin Lawsky, special assistant to the attorney general, wrote “We are primarily focused on whether insurance companies are paying schools to push students into health coverage they don’t really need and shouldn’t really want.”

“With students and their families being financially squeezed at every turn,” he added, “colleges must ensure that they are looking out for students’ best interest first and foremost as opposed to their own financial bottom line.”

Cuomo has requested health insurance–related documents from six State University of New York schools — Binghamton, Buffalo State, Oswego, Purchase, Stony Brook, and the University at Buffalo. Investigators have asked to see copies of the schools’ requests for proposals from insurers, insurance contracts, and the information given to students about the health plans available to them, as well as statistics on the health insurance premiums paid by students.

Four institutions, Georgetown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, and Sarah Lawrence College, said they had received subpoenas.

Parents have complained that some schools require students to purchase school-sponsored health insurance, even though the student is already insured under a family health insurance policy, said James Boyle, president of College Parents of America, an association of parents of college students.

Although “the vast majority of college students” are covered under their parent’s health insurance, most campus health centers don’t accept insurance plans that aren’t affiliated with the school, Boyle added.

“Instead,” he said, “some schools force the student, as a condition of enrollment, to purchase health insurance policies offered by the school.”

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Colleges With Highest Tuition Wary of Economic Downturn

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:57:00 GMT

After years of ranking among the nation’s top five most expensive schools, Sarah Lawrence College — a private, liberal arts school in Bronxville, New York with a tuition price tag of more than $53,000 a year — is now the priciest school in America, beating out George Washington University and New York University, according to a new College Board report.

With such a hefty cost of attendance, the former all girls school, like many private colleges and universities, is concerned about its financial outlook in today’s economy (“Even at Costliest College, Unease Over Downturn,” The New York Times, Nov. 1, 2008).

Unlike public schools, which receive state and federal funding, private institutions like Sarah Lawrence depend on their tuition and fees, their fundraising efforts, and their endowments to pay for the bulk of their operational expenses.

Sarah Lawrence’s endowment, which the school uses to supplement its $80 million operating budget, has shrunk 16 percent from $77 million since May 2007. Yet, Sarah Lawrence still manages to offer 53 percent of its students some sort of financial aid — an expense that makes up 21 percent of the school’s budget.

While Sarah Lawrence has yet to see an uptick in the number of requests for financial aid this year, school president, Karen Lawrence, is wary of the economic pressures bearing down on the middle-and-upper-class families who may soon be or are already putting their kids through college.

“It’s really hard to tell how much we are going to be impacted,” Lawrence said. “Some students are struggling more because family finances are changes. We are trying to help them out.”

But, Lawrence said, the school’s small $65 million endowment, which pales in comparison to the $34 billion endowment of fellow liberal arts school Harvard University, is making it more difficult to help families meet Sarah Lawrence’s rising tuition costs.

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Fake Data From U.S. News & World Report’s College Rankings?

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:25:00 GMT

In the past few years, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding U.S. News & World Report’s yearly college issue, “America’s Best Colleges” and the rankings of the colleges. Many are saying the rankings and the methodology used are inaccurate at best and slanted at worst. I remember a New York Times article saying that the rankings may be based more on endowments, as Harvard, Yale and Princeton tend to end up in the top three slots and also have the largest endowments.

Today I came across an article by Scott Jaschik titled “Would U.S. News Make Up Fake Data?” found in the March 12, 2007 edition of Inside Higher Ed. Apparently, colleges are starting to take a stand by speaking out against U.S. News & World Report’s methods. According to the article, “It’s not unusual for college presidents to complain about U.S. News rankings (at least out of the earshot of U.S. News editors). But on Sunday, the president of Sarah Lawrence College publicly charged that the magazine is preparing to publish made up, false data about her institution.”

Controversy Stems from Assumptions

What is going on here is that since Sarah Lawrence College “no longer collects or examines SAT scores, U.S. News officials have said that the magazine will just assume that the average SAT would have been one standard deviation (about 200 points) below the average of Sarah’s Lawrence’s peers. ‘In other words, in the absence of real data, they will make up a number,’ wrote [Michele Tolela] Myers,” as stated in the article. Myers is president at Sarah Lawrence. Many college administrators claim that the magazine unfairly penalizes schools that do not submit such data as “reputational” surveys and SAT scores, as is the case with Sarah Lawrence.

The article stated that “Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, praised Sarah Lawrence and said it was taking a principled stand. ‘The U.S. News policy of fabricating data for colleges which refuse to report average scores it is both unfair and unethical,’ he said, adding that the ‘practice further undermines the credibility of the magazine’s already widely criticized rankings.’”

Organized Effort to Combat ‘Ranksteering’

On the heels of Myer’s stand is one by several colleges to band together and defend “educational values” over misleading and unfair rankings. The article reported:

“A new effort is being organized to allow colleges to act in concert so that they fight back against the rankings. Some of the inspiration for this new effort came in January, when Lloyd Thacker, founder of the Education Conservancy, gave a presentation to the Council on Independent Colleges called ‘Ranksteering: Driving Under the Influence.’ Thacker’s organization argues that the college admission process has become divorced from educational values and ‘ranksteering’ is his term for the impact of U.S. News and other rankings.

“The presentation prompted a group of 10 presidents to work on a letter — currently circulating among them — outlining strategies that could be used to take on the rankings. The presidents’ idea is to send the letter to all Council on Independent Colleges members (more than 570 institutions) to try to build a movement with the clout to be effective. Among the ideas in the letter: refusing to provide any help to U.S. News, refusing to fill out the ‘reputational’ survey, pledging not to advertise any rankings they receive from U.S. News, and/or posting a prominent statement on their Web sites noting the dubious qualities of many ratings.”

I always wondered just how fair these rankings are, and now it seems the truth is coming out. Hopefully, this initiative started by the 10 college presidents will go far in encouraging college students to do their own due diligence when researching college options, instead of relying on a potentially flawed ranking system.

Talk to the education financial advisors at NextStudent. They have all the information and advice you need on student loans. Check out www.nextstudent.com.

Be sure to tune in next Tuesday for my next blog about this week in student loans.

Student Loan Girl

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