Columbia Fires Financial Aid Director

David Charlow, executive director of undergraduate financial aid, has been fired from Columbia, University officials announced today.

The dismissal comes on the same day as the New York Post reported that Charlow had exchanged e-mails with leaders in the lending company Student Loan Xpress to have students use the company. Charlow held stock in the company, which was one of the University's preferred lenders until last month. Six weeks ago, Columbia placed Charlow on paid leave due to these ties pending an investigation.

"I want by its design to lead the students to [the] best decision in an idiot-proof way," Charlow wrote last year in an e-mail to Fabrizio Balestri, chief executive office of SLX, the Post reported today.

Charlow's ties to SLX first came to the public's notice as New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched an investigation into his ties to the lender.

"We have been working cooperatively with the Attorney General's office to provide documents and materials related to Mr. Charlow's tenure as the head of financial aid for the undergraduate College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science," Robert Hornsby, a spokesman for Columbia, wrote in a press release announcing Charlow's dismissal. "As these matters are now appropriately in the hands of the Attorney General, we cannot comment further on Mr. Charlow at this time."

"I have said that based upon the facts as I know them at this stage, what David Charlow did was completely unacceptable and in clear violations of our policies," University President Lee Bollinger said in an interview last month.