Okay. I’m currently a study-abroad student in Mexico from UC Berkeley. I get charged the non-resident tuition each year–including this year abroad–but I qualify for an AB 540 non-resident tuition exemption. Generally, those waivers appear as awards on my financial account. This year they did not, so I was offered more aid to meet my student budget than I would had been offered had the waivers appeared as awards at the beginning of the academic year.
Moreover, although UC Berkeley’s Financial Aid Office packaged my aid for this year abroad, my disbursements/payments are made via my UCEAP financial account (UC’s study-abroad agency). This account is separate from my Berkeley financial account. On my UCEAP financial account, they actually did take into account my non-resident tuition waivers from the very beginning, because I let them know I qualified for them and they contacted UC Berkeley to verify. They confirmed. What I’m trying to say is that although UC Berkeley basically forgot to add my waivers as awards to my financial aid package, they had information from the beginning about me receiving those waivers through UCEAP.
Now, a few days ago, they basically asked me to repay the amount in over-awards that has already been overpaid to me. The overpaid amount is basically coming from outside scholarships and a Direct Loan. The scholarships should have reduced my other awards, but because Berkeley was not taking into account the waivers, it basically seemed as though I was still eligible for more aid because my student budget had not been met yet, since it includes the non-resident tuition.
Nonetheless, from the FSA handbook, I believe I’m not entitled to repay back anything because the overpayment resulted from an error on UC Berkeley’s behalf. They basically didn’t take into account all my awards when they had information about them. For instance, the last reported outside scholarship came in December 2016, but they still disbursed my aid this semester without taking into account that scholarship (they basically disbursed the scholarship to me plus other awards I was no longer eligible for because of the scholarship).
So… I don’t owe anything? I’m arguing that UC Berkeley owes the federal student aid awards that are now in excess because they didn’t reduce them when they had the information that required them to do so.
I think that you are going to find your self on the downside of this power dynamic. The school has a responsibility to recoup monies paid in error. If you choose not to pay it back, it will show up as a debt on your account that can prevent you from registering for classes for the next term.
I would advise meeting with them in person to work something out with the.
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Nonetheless, from the FSA handbook, I believe I’m not entitled to repay back anything because the overpayment resulted from an error on UC Berkeley’s behalf.
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Entitled???
Do you mean “required”???
Please copy/paste the wording in the FSA handbook that deals with this.
If federal funds are over awarded, you have to pay them back ASAP. What will be the consequences of not doing that? You won’t get any more federal funds - no loans, no Pell, no SEOG.
Your choice. Pay now, or pay for it later when you lose all aid.
“A school may attempt to collect from a student funds it has returned.
However, this is not an FSA debt because an overpayment for which a
school is responsible can never become an FSA debt for a student.
Therefore an overpayment for which a school is responsible can never
result in a student’s losing FSA eligibility and should never be reported to
NSLDS or referred to the Department for collection.”
What I’m getting from this is that the school will have to pay back the federal funds that were over awarded and hence overpaid to me. But it’s not my responsibility to pay back that amount to the school.
No, it is saying the that the FSA will not try to collect from you,. It does not say the school cannot collect it from you. The first line says “A school may attempt to collect from a student funds it has returned.”
Do what you want, but the school will award you no more of its own aid until this is fixed. Next year, you won’t get the instate tuition waiver or perhaps some other aid.
While OP took his/her quote from page 12, you forgot to add a very important piece on page 1:
While what you quote states you may not owe the federal government, it does not mean that you will not owe the school if the school has to repay the overpayment to the federal government. The school is ultimately responsible for making sure that the government gets reimbursed. This does not mean that they cannot go after you to get the money.
IF you don’t repay the school, you will have an owed balance that will prevent you from registering until you resolve the issue.
I think this is a fairly simple logic problem. They want you to repay an award you received in error. You, presumably, would like to have a degree from them someday. You can have one or the other, but you won’t get both. Which do you want more?
Not only can they withhold the degree, the place in school, but any more aid period. this seems such a petty approach from an aid recipient at a school like UCB?
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But it's not my responsibility to pay back that amount to the school.<<<<
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Other than the fact that it is, this attitude is horrible. DO you really want to draw attention to yourself in this way?
I’m not being petty. I just find it unfair that I’m abruptly being asked to pay back almost half of what I was refunded for this academic year when I have evidence that suggests that the school is responsible for the over payment, not me. Here’s an example from the FSA handbook on when the school is responsible, and which is literally the same thing that is happening to me right now:
“Owen received an outside scholarship to
attend Guerrero University. The bursar’s
office was notified of the scholarship so
that it would apply the payments properly
but didn’t notify the financial aid office.
Owen received a Perkins Loan, but the
financial aid office didn’t take the scholarship
into account when awarding the loan
because it didn’t know about the scholarship.
When the financial aid office later
found out about the scholarship, it
discovered that Owen received too much
aid and had a $600.00 Perkins overpayment.
Because the school had information
about the scholarship (even though the
financial aid office didn’t), the overpayment
is due to a school error.”
Except, in my case, all relevant parties–including the Financial Aid Office at Berkeley–had information about all my aid awards from the beginning of the AY. In fact, I’m the one who initiated a conversation via e-mail between all relevant parties in which my instate tuition eligibility was confirmed. The FAO was let known and they confirmed reception of the information. The FAO went ahead and irresponsibly disbursed more aid on my name than I was eligible for. With the AY almost over, it seems pretty rude to me that they are just now looking into the matter and asking for a lot of money back.
The FSA handbook is not clear on whether the student must pay back the overpaid federal funds when the school is responsible, but it does state that the school cannot report the student to the Department of Education when such is the case. The student does not lose FSA eligibility. It’s ultimately the school who must pay back the over awards. To then demand payment from the student when the school is clearly fully responsible would be unprofessional and I want to believe that that is not something that my school would do, but the opposite seems more likely.
Lastly, since I received three outside scholarships this year and I took out a small loan, I could argue that the excess money is coming from those awards, one which I have to pay back anyway and others which I rightfully earned. That’s also why I don’t feel so bad about arguing that my school is the one responsible for the overused federal funds, it went towards their tuition charges and fees anyway.
Of course I’m very appreciative of financial aid opportunities at my school and of my school in general. I’m trying to work out a fair solution with them at the moment, but it must be fair.
You are not paying federal funds back to the government!!! If the school owes the federal government money, that is on them to pay the government.
That does not mean that you do not owe Berkeley money or that they cannot recoup the money from you (they have a right to do both).
No matter how you slice it or how much in your feelings that you want to be, the college says you owe them money. You can either work with them to resolve this issue or not continue. You will be in a bind, because you will not be able to register, and your transcripts will be on hold preventing you from going elsewhere.
You can either see this as a learning opportunity and figure out how to manage the financial angle, and how to prevent stuff like this from happening in your future.
Or, you can dig in and insist you aren’t being petty and refuse to see the handwriting on the wall.
This really is a good learning opportunity- trust me. I had someone who worked for me who never opened his retirement statements when they arrived every quarter. Too busy I guess. Then one year we converted to an online system, and he logged on and discovered that he had less in the account than he “should have”. So we opened an investigation- the company takes these things seriously- and discovered that during his last raise period when his retirement contribution from the company should have gone up (we contribute a fixed percentage of someone’s salary up to the legal cap) his contribution had stayed at his earlier level.
It was a mistake. It happened. The employee kept insisting that the company “owed him” the payment from a previous year. But that’s not legal- you can’t do a retroactive payment into a two years ago tax year.
He was livid, yelled and screamed, he’d been cheated. So we agreed to gross up what would have been in the account and paid it to him via check as a one time bonus. But he was still livid- his account would be under what it would have been (nothing anyone can do about that after the fact).
Of course- all of this would have been avoided if he’d opened the envelopes which arrived every quarter like clockwork and alerted someone that he’d been underfunded while there was still time to do something about it.
It seems like from your story, you knew as soon as you saw your statement that there had been an error (in your favor, but an error). You could have made the phone call then. But you didn’t.
And now you owe the U the money you were incorrectly awarded.
This is not terribly dissimilar to your bank mistakenly crediting too much to your account. It is their fault, but you don’t get to keep with money. It was never yours.
The scholarships that should have reduced my other awards came in later into the academic year in November and December of 2016. The problem of excess awards that resulted in over payments was therefore not obvious in the beginning since there wasn’t a single payment, but rather various ones throughout the year.
However, I admit that although I was confused about the last disbursement (a month ago), I did not raise questions or looked into the matter. In this sense, all of this is indeed a learning experience. That doesn’t mean the school isn’t at least half responsible, hence why I’m striving for a fairer solution.
I’m not sure what you consider to be a “fairer” solution. If by fair you mean the university should let you repay the money on a payment plan so you don’t have to come up with it all at once, I think that does sound fair. If you think you shouldn’t have to pay the entire amount back, I don’t think that’s fair or that you’ll get very far with that approach.
What is half responsible in this case- Does the school send letters with each statement saying “If you realize we’ve given you money to which you are not entitled, please call us back and let us know?”
Yes- if that was their practice, and they failed to send that letter, then they are half responsible.
No, the Financial Aid Office is in charge of designing my cost of attendance and making appropriate adjustments to my financial aid package. They had many opportunities to make the correct adjustments from the beginning when they had full information about my non-resident tuition waivers and throughout the year as more awards came in. They failed to do that.
I neither decide which awards I get offered nor do I have access to making adjustments.
What if the error was in their favor? Would you accept that, well that’s that? What if they failed to give you the non-resident tuition waiver and once they awarded the financial aid based on the OOS tuition just said, “Oh, you should have let us know! Now that it’s all in the computer, too bad!”