I am a recent victim of this school's unethical, inept financial procedures. Just like another former student has posted, every term I checked with financial aid to ensure that I had enough grant and loan money to attend the next term and each term I was told that I was fine (even when I changed from two classes per term to three per term). I was about two terms away from graduating when I just so happened to view my account online and saw that I had a negative balance of over $2,000.
I called the school to inquiry about this and was told that the balance was from a previous year. According to the school, grant money was returned because I did not qualify (so what started out as mostly grant money ended up being mostly loan money). Considering my household finances at the time, I don't see how I didn't qualify for grant money and who told me that I qualified in the first place???
I asked how this was so and why wasn't I informed last year when it occurred. I was told that the change occurred due to some changes I made to my FAFSA (which I didn't make) and then I was further insulted by the person on the phone telling me that I was informed of the balance. What's worse the school also sent loan money back and the negative $2,000 balance became negative $4,000. I was told that I couldn't get any more money under the basic student loan procedures at Citibank for this previous period, but had to take out a CitiAsst loan for which I'm being charge almost 18% interest (honestly, I believe that Kaplan U must be making a pretty good commission doing business with Citibank).
Anyway, I had a credit balance of $329.00 and I was told that I could not get a refund because the school had determined that the refund was from the CitiAsst loan and when there is a refund from a CitiAsst loan it has to go back to the bank (how they figured that out is a mystery to me since I also had to pay money out of my pocket and had loans coming in under the basic Citibank program as well).
I don't think it's right that the school made this decision when I am the one who has to paid the money back. I contacted an attorney, but I was told this week that the money was sent back to the bank (I will be checking to make sure this is so). Imagine how much money Kaplan would stand to gain if the school stole $300 or more from every graduating student
If it weren't for the fact that I had gone so far already with this school when I discovered what I was dealing with, I would have left.
I'm in on the class action suit.
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