<p>I am currently attending a school that does not ever give financial aid money on time. My tuition still is not paid, but yet my loan disclosure says they released the funds to my institution on August 8th. </p>
<p>The financial aid process at this college is so horrible, that students have started a Facebook page trading the horrible financial aid experiences that have occurred to them while attending. Mass amounts of students are discussing transferring to other colleges, and have even contacted local news channels to get some recognition for these issues.</p>
<p>Every semester there is an issue getting money to students, there has to be someone that this can be reported to?</p>
<p>It sounds like you have an odd view of the world and are looking for someone to enforce your idea of fairness. “Fair” is a subjective term that differs for everyone involved.</p>
<p>If the school has committed fraud, report them to the police. If they have violated the terms of a contract, you can sue them for damages.</p>
<p>However, my guess is that you simply dislike their business practices. Fortunately, there is no government bureacracy that deals with embittered financial aid recepients. Your remedies are to: continue to accept their terms of business; negotiate directly with them for better terms; or take your business elsewhere.</p>
<p>Colleges realize how difficult it is for students to transfer. Thus, they have every incentive to be difficult to negoatiate with. Finally, most students simply accept their terms and the school gets interest-free loans for a month or more.</p>
<p>Today is only Sept. 4th. If the feds disbursed the funds Aug. 8th, do you not think it would take a few weeks to sort out the balances, refunds, etc.? (I can’t tell, though, what the standard turn-around time is. I know that my son’s school, for example, disburses the week before school starts and the week during school – but nobody gets late fees if they have pending aid.</p>
<p>In your case:</p>
<p>When was tuition due?
How many students attend your school?
Is it your “overage” reimbursements you and your fellow students feel the school should be more prompt about?
Are you charged late fees if you’ve missed the tuition deadline, or are they forgiven if you have a positive financial aid balance coming?</p>
<p>These are some of the questions you’d want to sort out before wasting much time with a formal complaint.</p>
<p>@kmcmom, No this isn’t the refund. This is the actual aid that is to pay my tuition. The financial aid department actually made students (including myself) start a payment plan to hold classes. The amount of students that attend would be around 15k-20k? Tuition was due August 10th.</p>
<p>So, you think that the school shouldn’t charge tuition before school starts? Why not? It is normal for colleges to have tuition due about a month before school starts. They have expenses that they need to pay before the first day of school. This is a totally normal process. I really don’t think there is any entity that you can complain to.</p>
<p>Missemily and collegebound…what the OP is saying is that the funds are but not credited to the students accounts. For example…I can see when my kid’s federal direct loans are scheduled for disbursement and I can see when show up in my student’s on-line account. The OP is saying that the college doesn’t apply the money to the student’s accounts so there is a gap of multiple weeks between the moneis being disbursed to the colleges and the monies being applied to the student accounts. This doesn’t have anything to do with reimbursement, in fact the OP is saying the kids have to give the college more money to hold their spots in the class while waiting for the federal monies to show up in their account balances.</p>
<p>Does this uni give you all reasons why the monies aren’t credited to your accounts in a timely manner? What does the Burser’s office say to you?</p>
<p>@momofthreeboys; this semester they are saying they are working with a new system. Unfortunately, this happens every semester. Nothing is done in a timely manner, even despite you turning in all your financial aid items way ahead of the deadline.</p>
<p>Also, you cannot get through to any department on the phone. They do not answer. If you leave an email or message, you will not receive a response. If you go to campus, which you will have to to speak to someone, they will tell you “I don’t know when it will be resolved. We are working on it.” You get this answer week after week.</p>
<p>Ah, well I am sorry that I misunderstood. Another thing that might be happening is that the funds do not reach the school on the date that the funds show disbursed. This happens with Mortgage Companies when they pay property taxes - they show a “Disbursement” date on the individual mortgage holders account when the funds are removed from the escrow account, however the funds are then moved to their tax department or a third party company who holds the funds until the due date, and then electronically pays the taxes to the county on the latest date possible. It has to do with holding the funds until the last possible second to earn interest on it… but it causes a lot of confusion for the customer who wants to know why their taxes aren’t showing paid when the lender says they have already sent the funds…</p>
<p>I had a similar issue with my daughters school. Bursar was sending bills to pay up while fin aid office was slow to credit. The fin aid office noted daughters account to that effect so no classes were threatened. Why they can threaten to pull your classes because they are slow is beyond me. That’s the real issue.</p>
<p>They have a printout with what students are getting what money, whether it’s posted to their account or not. So to ask for mores absurd.</p>
<p>Federal regulations require that schools apply federal aid to a student’s account within three business days of the day they draw down funds from the federal system; disbursements cannot be made more than 10 days before the term begins. If you received a notification that the funds were disbursed to your account, the school has dated your loan for that date - and interest on unsub loans begins on that date. They should be drawing funds at that point, and the funds should be credited to your account within 3 business days. If this is not happening, the school is in violation of regulations. It is possible that something happened and the loan records were rejected … meaning that the school did not actually get to draw down the money from the federal system … but your loan disbursement date must be adjusted accordingly. </p>
<p>Sometimes schools have trouble with computer systems, and things get held up. However, this is not the student’s fault & the school should hold off on de-registering finaid students who have not yet paid. I worked at a huge school with plenty of problems processing aid & we would have moved heaven and earth to make sure no students who were paid except for expected aid were penalized for nonpayment.</p>
<p>I’m glad you saw this post Kelsmom. I’m not sure what the OP can do but perhaps if the loans show up in the loan service site the OP can show the burser’s office. The only alternative might be to get help from a local journalist who might be looking for a story or an involved group of students who understand how to get the disbursement dates etc. What a mess.</p>
<p>Actually, I am going to amend my reply. The notification OP received may very well have been simply saying that a loan record has been created. This is generally done several weeks in advance of the term, so that any issues can be corrected in advance of disbursement. I strongly suspect this may be what happened. In this case, there is no money involved … it is only a notification that the loan record has been created. Later, there will be a disbursement, the money will be applied to the student’s account, and the school will make any refunds according to its institutional policies. If the loan disclosure actually says that the funds were released to the school on 8/8, though, then that means the money was paid to the school on that date & they should be applied to the student’s account already. However, some schools are computerized to the point that this notification may have been generated with the assumption that the funds were received by the school … but subsequently the school may have discovered issues with the loan records & the funds were returned to the government (to be re-disbursed later). It is possible that the school is really having trouble, and they are working to correct it. Communication seems to be lacking on the part of the school.</p>
<p>perhaps if the loans show up in the loan service site the OP can show the burser’s office.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, there is generally a lag between the loan origination & the loan appearing on the NSLDS site. If it does, though, I would definitely do this!</p>
<p>This is all very interesting Kelsmom. It’s all worked smoothly for my kids except when S1’s school implemented a new financial system… I still think the kids should try to talk to the bursar’s office or registrar to see if they can’t get some communication channels established if this happens regularly.</p>
<p>OP, what date was your first day of classes?
Does the system show your fin aid online?
And in your case, does your financial aid cover your entire tuition/board, or is there a portion owed by you/your parents?</p>
<p>Classes started on August 20th and they were “purging” schedules for students who did not pay on a deposit for classes, due to financial aid not posting in time. In the system, I see my awards and have had them accepted since August 1st…</p>