I have an update. I have a special personal email address for my CC stuff that’s easier to do outside the CC pm system. I hadn’t heard from the OP in ages & stopped checking. I just checked today and realized that they had sent an email about five weeks ago that I missed (I just set up forwarding to my normal email so that doesn’t happen in the future).
OP sent me text from an email that the school sent them. It was clear as mud, and it took awhile for it to dawn on me that although the VA pays 90% of tuition for the benefit they have, there is an annual limit on the tuition amount that qualifies for the 90%. Anything over that amount is 100% the responsibility of the student. In addition, the VA payment year doesn’t coincide with the traditional definition of an academic year. The student actually owed the amount that was tuition in excess of the VA annual limit. The school screwed up their VA payment processing for the student during the year & they ended up crediting the student’s account for more than the student was eligible to receive from VA. I assume that the VA contacted them about the issue, because the school returned the money to the VA after the student graduated, resulting in a balance on the student’s account after graduation.
Fortunately, this student said that they did get their transcript. That’s good.
What is not good is that the school never succinctly said why the student owes. What’s wrong with: “You were paid too much. You were responsible for 100% of tuition over x-amount, and we messed up and credited you for VA benefits when we shouldn’t have. We apologize, but we had to repay the VA the amount you were not eligible to receive. Let’s set up a reasonable repayment schedule.” Mistakes happen, but if schools don’t explain what happened, students are left wondering what the heck is going on. Customer service is important.