Questions for a Superstar Start-up Chris Hoffman’s extensive look this month (pages 50-58) at the questions facing wunderkind New Haven start-up Higher One is a springboard into numerous public policy questions affecting Connecticut and the nation. What moral standard should be enforced on the business practices of companies that receive tax breaks? To what extreme should corporate executives be allowed to profit as the value of shareholders’ investments drop? What place do we allow for business models that profit on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable of our community? Dating back to the administration of Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Higher One has been heaped with praise and support from economic development officials, politicians and higher education administrators. It’s one of the “best” recent examples of entrepreneurship spinning off from the Yale University galaxy, and the fact that its three co-founders were still students there when it was formed adds to the storyline. It was a job creator as most were cutting jobs. It built a beautiful headquarters in New Haven with the help of $20 million in tax credits from the state of Connecticut, and was even named a “best place to work.” Maybe that’s why, to this day, Higher One’s cheerleaders, including Yale University, are silent or openly defensive about a business model that critics say preys on some of the poorest people in our country—struggling college students. While its founders took millions in salary and cashed in millions more in stock from Higher One, students were charged 50-cent transaction fees for using their Higher One debit cards—as a debit card. They paid additional fees because of the scarcity of Higher One ATMs (averaging less than two per college campus), for using their accounts too much, for using their accounts too little. Some allege that Higher One’s marketing, aided by college administrations that save significantly by outsourcing to the company, is deceptive and tricks students into using the high-fee accounts. These are the kind of practices that, if brought to Connecticut by a Bank of America or other corporate giant, would have our state’s U.S. senators and attorney general scrambling to hold press conferences and call for investigations. Maybe because Connecticut is exporting instead of importing this particular predation, we are OK with celebrating ribbon cuttings and handing out tax breaks instead.