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Hopkins Aid Officer Was Paid More by Lenders Than Disclosed

Ellen Frishberg, who resigned earlier this month as "financial aid director at Johns Hopkins University" had "accepted more than $130,000 from eight lending industry companies during her tenure, twice as much money as previously disclosed." ... she also "advised the federal government on rules for officials dealing with the student loan industry and lectured peers on the need to avoid perceived conflicts of interest." ...Frishberg said that she "had worked for lending companies but that she never viewed the arrangements as conflicts of interest."

Reaction to this article:

1) How can someone whose job duties include recommending lenders to students who trust them to be impartial not view accepting large sums of money from a student loan company as a conflict of interest?

2) Why was half of the sum not disclosed? Given that she claims not to have seen this as a conflict of interest, why not disclose it?

3) What would someone who lectures about avoiding perceived conflicts of interest actually consider a perceived conflict of interest, given that she didn't consider this to be a conflict of interest?

4) What happens when you have people in positions of influence and power in a multi-billion dollar industry being paid by the federal government to create the rules and regulations of their own industry? Do they always rig the system so they make lots of money at the expense of the common people at the bottom, and then pretend like they did nothing wrong when the truth is uncovered? [In an unrelated story, oil chiefs met with Cheney's energy task force in 2001 to help create Bush's energy policy and laws. Ken Lay, of Enron felony fame, was almost certainly involved.]

[clarification/correction: It isn't clear from the article if Frishberg was paid by the Department of Education for her advise about rules for student aid officials, though it is clear that she was paid by them for something. It also isn't clear whether the advisors to Cheney's task force were paid. Clearly though, whether or not they were paid isn't really the issue. Their huge influence in writing their own regulations is the issue.]