I am a student of AIU. I had the misfortune of being an overworked and under educated. I hit a ceiling in my career and needed a degree to move upward.
My admissions rep was a sweetheart. She told me not to worry AIU is very supportive of their students and if I had any problems, they will back me up. I was happy to become part of their student body.
I ended up paying over a beyond what my loans paid. That was ok as well because I was happy to be a student. I kept my payments up and never missed a payment date. And then all of a sudden they changed my schedule from business math class to college algebra. I was horrified but I thought the school would "back me up" like my admissions rep said they would. I started my algebra class and tried to understand the material. I tried to listen to the instructor during the archived live chats. The problem is that the live chat never worked and when it did the voice was about 2 minutes behind what was written on the screen. I could not make sense of it.
Needless to say I failed the class. During, before and after the class I wrote email after email begging for some help. My frustration was so high that I wanted to scream. No one would help me. They would write back saying "read the book" or "hire a tutor" and even told me to have a friend or family member work the problems for me. If I could understand the book, I would have been able to do the problems but I needed the instructor to explain the problems to me.
I also emailed technical services and told them. They wrote back saying that they checked out the live chat mechanism and it worked fine. That's great that it worked for them but it did not work for me!
When I took the class over again I had a wonderful instructor who explain the problem very well. The live chat worked fine and I passed the class with an A.
Now AIU is charging me an extra $2108.00 for the extra class session that I had to take because their program didn't work. They want me to may and extra $365.00 a month on top of the $265.00 a month I am already paying. I can't afford this. My student loan is already around $20,000.
When I wrote to them numerous times, the only response I got was from the dean of students who stated and I quote, "unlike traditional college, our instructors play a supportive role for the student in facilitating their research. It is not their responsiblity to demonstrate and explain the steps involved in problem solving"
I asked to file an appeal and no one is getting back with me. Every time I write them they say that they see nothing in my file. I'm about to quit and go on to a better program. My trust in online programs is gone and I don't know who to trust.
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