Welcome AES Success
How interesting that AES Success IP addresses are showing up. More interesting still the search they did to find the blog on Cuomo and PHEAA - they googled PHEAA and came up with several blog posts, mine included, questioning where Pennsylania's Attorney General is in all this and asking for investigation.
So, are folks at AES worried, or just wasting our student loan interest dollars on web searched for press on their company?
posted by Anniken Davenport, Esquire @ 10:07 AM
2 Comments:
Thank you for the welcome. It is interesting what one can find when searching a company name, such as “PHEAA” with the google news or blog search engine. But more interesting is why one must track the IP addresses of those who stumble upon a blog and withhold the fact that they are tracking IP address visits.
So let’s first get this out of the way, I am a PHEAA employee (Rule #1 in blogging ethics, is to provide full-disclosure) and I did indeed do a PHEAA search on Google and stumbled upon your blog. It is very important to keep up-to-date, not only on the news sites but on the blog sites as well. I never heard it was a bad practice to know what the general public thinks; I actually thought it was the reason people blogged – so that their voice could be heard.
Next, PHEAA’s employees are paid through earnings made by our commercial business, AES. NOT FROM TAX DOLLARS.
In your blog from 4/10 regarding the NY Attorney General Cuomo’s investigation, you ask the question is, “Is PHEAA next?” This question is based on speculation, there are no facts to support the argument that you have presented.
Here are the facts: PHEAA does not engage in those types of practices, nor could we because we are heavily regulated and audited. And I can assure you, PHEAA is in compliance with the federal and state governments. The conferences that you are comparing to the current investigation are like apples to oranges. Our conferences, that ended two-years ago, did not involve financial aid kickbacks to schools and financial aid professionals.
Despite the recent media attention circling the conferences, changes have been made at PHEAA regarding our spending practices and policies. PHEAA holds itself to a higher standard and our main goal is to help students achieve their dreams of going to college without allowing financial burdens to get in the way.
And the last point I would like to make is just because there are Pennsylvania schools listed under the investigation doesn’t necessarily mean they are connected to a Pennsylvania financial aid organization. There are numerous financial aid organizations that do business in Pennsylvania with Pennsylvania schools.
The earnings are based on interest students pay on their student loans, so therefore the time you are spending reading blogs is money that could be used to make more GRANTS to deserving students, rather than on an employee's web surfing - unless you are in the PR department. Then I suppose you have a legitimate reason for trying to figure out what the public thinks.
Thanks for the information on your practices. I certainly hope that is true.
Post a Comment
<< Home