Looking for Mr. GoodPackage
by Reginald Page

I had just finished my financial aid night presentation at Our Town High School. While talking to some parents who approached me afterwards, I noticed a couple of people having a heated discussion in the back of the auditorium. By the time I finished reassuring the last worried mom that I would not force her to sell her home so that Johnny could go to college, the conversation in the back had broken up and I thought nothing more about it. A week later, I would be thinking of little else.

Most of us who have been around financial aid awhile have heard stories at conferences or from colleagues about“ financial aid consultants.” Not too long ago, their dubious activities were the subject of a Consumer Alert issued by the
Federal Trade Commission.There are no statistics, but their numbers seem to be growing.According to the FTC, the free financial aid seminar is the most recent trend in scholarship scams. If you have ever had the misfortune of sharing your
household with a high school student, especially one who has somehow made it to senior year, then you too have likely been the target of their junk mail.

”You can’t afford to miss our FREE financial aid seminar.”
“Don’t touch that FAFSA before you contact us!”
“Double or Even Triple Your Eligibility!”
“Join us for Dinner. Complimentary Tickets Enclosed.”

Now how could I pass up an offer to bail me out of college debtors’ prison on a full stomach? Let’s see, do I want the chicken or the roast beef?

Despite the culinary inducements, I never did get sufficiently motivated to attend one of these things and see for myself what goes on there. It was not necessary. By the time I packed my youngest off to college, I had been solicited to attend free seminars by no fewer than seven different consultants from as far away as Nevada and Texas to as close as my own hometown. Without even trying, I had collected
enough examples of their marketing drivel to get a pretty good picture of how they operate.

Eventually, I concluded that I just couldn’t ignore their exaggerated claims and outlandish scare tactics any longer. Enough was enough. It was time for me to join forces with the FTC in sounding the alarm about financial aid consultants and free seminars. Armed with new slides for my financial aid night presentation, I boldly went on the offensive.

I began by asking the parents in my audience at the high schools if they had ever received seminar invitations, and to share the experience if they had actually attended one. I discovered that, on average, more than half get invited, but relatively few attend.

Firsthand reports are consistently negative. The free seminar is just a stale appetizer consisting of the most basic financial aid advice.The main course is a sales pitch spurred on by assurances that certain perfectly legal “secret strategies” are known to make financial aid flow like honey from the guarded hives of academe. I am told the alleged secrets and a completed FAFSA can set you back about $1,000, give or take a few hundred.Your signature on the dotted line may even lock you into a four-year contract. Satisfaction guaranteed
or your money back, but only if you act now.

Remember those TV ads for Crazy Eddie? His prices were insane, too.

It had occurred to me that someday a real live financial aid consultant might be lurking in my audience at a high school, so I was not entirely surprised when it happened. This particular individual decided to send me a letter afterwards
because he was too busy talking with “others” to confront me at the high school. That explained the group I saw in the back of the auditorium that night. It seems he objected to some of my remarks. He also found the time to write the director of guidance at Our Town High School and send a copy to a member of the local school board. Things were getting interesting.

His letter to me said that he was impressed with my “seminar” and thought it
“might actually be helpful” to parents. How nice. The problem, he claimed, is that the help parents receive from a financial aid administrator may be suspect. How he reached that conclusion is unclear. Instead of warning parents, he said that I should reach out to “legitimate” consultants like him and recommend their services. He closed by assuring me that he was a good citizen and (you can’t make this stuff up) a Sunday school teacher.

I noticed a Web site address on his business letterhead. Before writing my reply, I couldn’t resist the urge to have a look. I had to learn more about the shadowy figure that I would come to know as Mr. Goodpackage.

Mr. Goodpackage Helps You Beat the Game
His thirtysomething face smiled back at me from the homepage. Mr. Goodpackage is undoubtedly a serious businessman who seems to be in it for the long haul. He established the business in 1999. He claims to know which colleges give the most financial aid. I suppose his clients like the ones who give the biggest tuition discounts. There are testimonials from satisfied customers who apparently hit the financial aid jackpot. He suggests you attend one of his free seminars to learn more.

His message is clear. College is incredibly expensive. There are many ways to get money to pay for college, but you have to know the tricks of the trade. You need inside information that you cannot get from anyone else. Parents who go it alone or get advice from the wrong source (that includes you and me in the aid office) make stupid mistakes and fail to get all the money they are entitled to receive.

Mr. Goodpackage knows a lot about what we do, but he likes to put a negative spin on most of it. According to him, we only focus on filling out the forms. We won’t share the “secrets” to getting aid. He warns parents that financial aid nights at the local high school can be “hazardous to your wealth!” The consistent theme is that financial aid is just a game you can beat if you know the right moves.
Furthermore, if you want to win, don’t look for any help from a college financial aid office.

Such are the tactics of “legitimate” financial aid consultants. I guess the “bad” ones do not have the time or the smarts to exploit flaws in the need analysis formula; they just tell their clients to lie and hope for the best.

This kind of portrayal does not sit well with me. My formal response to Mr. Goodpackage was short and sweet. I wrote that I disagreed with his conclusions about financial aid professionals, and I declined to recommend consulting
to parents because it is expensive and unnecessary. I also pointed out that, legitimate businessman or not, he employs the same questionable marketing tactics identified in the FTC Consumer Alert. In short, I stood by everything
in my presentation. I hoped the matter was settled.

It wasn’t. About a week after I mailed the letter, Mr. Goodpackage was on the phone waiting for me to take his call. Dark thoughts raced through my brain. Did I have a stalker on my hands? Would he turn out to be somebody’s favorite nephew? Was it lunchtime? I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

We had what you might call a frank conversation. Mr. Goodpackage had received my letter and wanted to talk about my low opinion of his trade. He asserted that what he does is no different than what accountants do when they prepare tax returns. I reminded him that accountants have professional credentials, whereas anyone can call himself a consultant. I also told him that I had no problem with the
concept of completing financial aid forms for people who wish to pay for the service—it’s their money.

My issue with Mr. Goodpackage and his cohorts is not that they conspire with families to commit fraud. That isn’t their game. It’s too risky and besides, people who are so inclined don’t need to be told how to cheat; they figure it out for themselves. It is the marketing hype and pressure sales tactics that are troubling.

The call gave me a chance to ask Mr. Goodpackage a few questions of my own. If you have a good product, why can’t you just tell people right up front what it is and how much it costs? Is it such a hard sell that you need wildly exaggerated claims and phony seminars to lure people into a room where you can close the deal? Do you make disparaging comments about financial aid professionals to drum up business or just to have a little fun on a slow day? I don’t even remember his answers. I was on a roll.

As we talked, I began to realize that Mr. Goodpackage never hesitated to take credit for everything you and I do to help students pay for college. Here was someone calling himself an expert who never in his life awarded a dime of
financial aid to anyone. Finally, I asked him if he could show me any evidence at all to prove his claim that his clients received more aid than they would have anyway without his help. Guess what? I’m still waiting for an answer.

What’s Wrong with It?
Who pays Mr. Goodpackage? Well, no actual buyers have confessed to me so far, but you and I know they’re out there. National direct mail marketing campaigns don’t come cheap, with or without the free meal. Obviously this stuff sells, but
who is buying and why?

It’s a difficult question to answer. Here again, there are no statistics or studies to back me up, but I’m convinced that there are some converging trends.

Rising tuition and “sticker shock” are clearly part of the mix. Let’s face it.Tuition rates, especially at our elite private colleges, scare the hell out of people. Even public college tuition is steep here in the Northeast, and post 9/11 state
budget cuts are making a bad situation worse. Fortunate indeed is the family that really earns enough to save for both college and retirement. Is it any wonder that parents are looking for an angle?

When I started out in this business 25 years ago, far fewer students applied for aid.You did not need to fill out a financial aid application to get a student loan, because all loans were subsidized. Parents who made a decent living didn’t bother to apply for need-based funding. That was for poor kids.

Things have changed. In the past few years, it seems like just about everyone applies. As more middle class families jumped or got pushed into the applicant pool, it didn’t take long for the sharks to notice the splash. That fin you just saw
was another financial aid consultant on the prowl.

Do you prepare your own tax returns? I don’t. I could if I wanted to, but keeping track of all that gobbledygook is a hassle and besides, trout season begins in April. I gladly pay someone else to walk in that IRS swamp for me each Spring
so I have more time to tie flies. The point is that many of the parents who are looking for aid to send their kids to your college are no different from you and me. They are willing and able to pay for certain services rather than give up their valuable time.

I also sense a growing public perception that our financial aid “system” is unfair. Most parents work hard to earn a living, regardless of how much or how little income they receive. Are they supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy about
need-based financial aid programs when their own kids probably won’t qualify for the benefits? Can we blame them for being skeptical about a rationing device masquerading as a need analysis formula? Is the notion that we punish thrift
and reward irresponsibility really that far off the mark? Perhaps some parents are just caught up in the cynicism that dogs our tarnished institutions these days. Maybe they succumb to hearsay about that damn neighbor’s kid getting a
free ride on financial aid while lounging by the backyard pool or driving dad’s Hummer all over town. I don’t know the answers, but if financing a college education is only a game, then maybe it does make sense to hire a coach and
play to win.

It’s fair to ask where the harm is in all this. If we hire experts to prepare income tax forms, why not financial aid forms? Absent fraud, what’s wrong with finding a loophole and whacking a couple thousand off someone’s EFC? So what if these guys promise far more than they can deliver. Is that any different than many other businesses?

Call me alarmist, but I’m afraid the day will come when too many parents begin to think that they need a financial aid consultant because it seems like everyone else has one. If the other guy is getting an advantage by working the system, then I better do the same or lose my share. This sort of gamesmanship has already helped to undermine the SAT test, where parents today feel they need to buy expensive test prep courses to tilt the odds for admission in their favor. It doesn’t take long for people to notice when the playing field isn’t level anymore. In the long run, everyone who can winds up paying more just to keep pace with the rest of the
field. Those who can’t pay get left behind.

Are We too Late?
Is it too late to do anything about Mr.Goodpackage and his ilk? Maybe or maybe not, but we’ll have only ourselves to blame should we fail to make an effort. I can think of several things that would help if we act now.

First, we need to make sure that our partners and the public understand the difference between a financial aid professional and someone calling himself a consultant. You and I did not spend years learning this business only to be overshadowed by a group of self-interested hucksters. Work with your financial aid professional organizations at all levels to move this issue up the agenda. Raise awareness among our partners, especially the high school guidance counselors and adult education providers.You are the expert. Make yourself available. If we don’t step up when called to serve the public interest, the pretenders will fill the vacuum.

Second, there is one aspect of our need analysis formula that more than any other plays into the hands of consultants. From what I have seen, manipulation of dependent student assets is number one on the list of “secret strategies”
employed to reduce family contributions. Eliminating the differential treatment of assets in need analysis would meet two objectives. It would remove a significant weapon from the arsenal of the consultants and it just makes sense on its
own merits. These are “family” resources. Add student and parental assets together and assess them at a uniform rate.

Finally, we need to recognize that, regardless of what we think about them, financial aid consultants are responding to a perceived need. To some extent, that is because we have failed to meet that need ourselves. We must do a better
job convincing the public that we are partners and not adversaries. Share information freely. If we have nothing more to offer than forms and regulations, consulting will surely thrive.

This article originally appeared in Student Aid Transcript. Copyright 2003, National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Reprinted by permission.