The issue: Financial institutions are working with universities to gain access to young consumers, offering million-dollar kickbacks to schools that steer students (and their financial aid) to questionable bank accounts.
Our take: Universities should be shepherding their students toward degrees and not needlessly expensive financial products. Thankfully, lawmakers in both the Senate and the House of Representatives have recently introduced bills aimed at ending those kickbacks and conflicts of interest between schools and banks.
“This legislation would put a stop to strong-arm tactics, like delaying the disbursement of federal student aid for students who opt out of their college’s preferred bank partner,” says Suzanne Martindale, staff attorney for Consumers Union. “The arrangements would be more transparent, and it would get rid of a lot of the gifts and incentives that are used to pull students and schools into these bad deals.”
We’ll continue to support these bills and any other efforts to clean up campus banking. Follow the progress at DefendYourDollars.org.
“A post-antibiotic era—in which common infections and minor injuries can kill—far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century.”
—That’s the conclusion of the World Health Organization’s new report on how the drugs we’ve relied on for 70 years to fight bacterial infections are becoming powerless. Find out why and how best to protect yourself and others from antibiotic-resistant infections by reading our investigation “Why You Should Be Worried about Antibiotics.”
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See past installments of Viewpoint.
This article also appeared in the September 2014 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.
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