My husband recently finished 4 years at Drexel University. During that time Drexel was actually given the honor of officially having the worst Financial Aid Department in the COUNTRY. When that happened, most of the department was fired, but that still didn't change their practices.
Tuition was charged before the financial aid came in; financial aid came in and was held for a month or longer before credited to the student; amounts of financial aid that was required to be distributed by federal law was not -until significant complaints were made; Drexel's stated itemization for student accounts is a MESS -with random amounts charged then credited back, tuition for one year reported for the following year on tax forms, inconsistent charging practices, and finally, at least one reported student who complained about a financial aid discrepancy was verbally intimidated by a high up official (he answered her complaint with "What the f*ck do you think you're doing...").
There is a huge papertrail of bull that is used to distract complaintants from what appears to be either suspicious or faulty accounting practices.in fact, on 3/15/04 when we asked about inconsistencies in their 1098T form which reports the amount of tuition paid for a given tax year, first we were told that the student loan lenders are responsible for that information (incorrect, lenders are responsible for the 1098E which reports student loan interest), then we were told that the 1098T only reports student out of pocket expenses -this is true but does not explain the fact that in the 2003 1098T, Drexel only reported 1 quarter of expenses when there was tuition charged for 2 quarters in 2003 (in fact 1 quarter they reported for the 2002 tax year).
In short DREXEL SHOULD BE AUDITED. I am CERTAIN that the IRS will make a significant amount of money.
Regardless of its IT reputation and great classes, I highly recommened that you DO NOT go to DREXEL or if you are alumni you DO NOT give them any money. They are extremely incompetant or unscrupulous with their accounting and this invariably HURTS the students.
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