Cuomo Charges Athletic Depts. Played Ball With Lenders
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is kicking his ongoing investigation into student loan providers up a notch, charging that top athletic departments across the country may have received kickbacks in exchange for promoting certain lenders.
Students trust their Universitys athletic departments because so much of campus life at Division I schools centers around supporting the home team, said Cuomo. To betray this trust by promoting loans in exchange for money is a serious issue, especially when Division I schools already generate tremendous revenue from their student athletes. Todays action is an important new step as we continue to examine the unethical conflicts that pervade the student loan industry.
Cuomo's office has subpoenaed 39 athletic departments, with Rutgers University being the only semi-local part of the investigation. The investigation is specifically looking into whether these athletic departments evaluated one lender's interest rates before recommending their federal loans, or if their endorsement of that lender was based purely on a payment scheme, or revenue sharing, which would violate federal law.