I began attending Kaplan University in the spring of 2009. I was hesitant to attend an online university, because apparently there are no scholarships or grants. Aside from Pell grants which I did not qualify for student loans were my only resource. I was assured by both the academic adviser and the financial aid adviser that there would be no problem in acquiring the financing for me to get a bachelors degree without any out-of-pocket expense while I was still in school. This was, in fact, not the case at all-apparently there are limits to the amount of money one can borrow to attend an online college, and that amount falls well below the amount because needed to acquire an online bachelors degree. ($57,000, which is the maximum I was allowed to borrow falls well below the $68,000 that it costs to gain a bachelors degree.)
I will grant that I did change majors one year into my degree, but again was assured by my financial aid officer that this would not pose any kind of of financial aid problem. This was an outright lie-in fact, there was never enough money for me to accomplish my degree. Add to that the financial aid department did not bother to do their job correctly and because they did not do their job correctly despite me being proactive in making sure that all of my classes were paid for did not bother to request payment for classes when they were due despite logging in my account that they had received the funds as appropriate.
Due to health concerns, I was forced to take a one semester leave of absence; when I took my leave of absence I havd a zero balance. When I came back from my leave of absence, I was told I owed $3710 - when I called to find out why, I was told not to worry about it that when my student loans came in, the balance would be cleared. This was a lie (which I didn't find out for another 7 weeks) the charges were in fact for classes that financial aid had not submitted to get paid when those same classes had show paid in full on my account and that they had received all the money that they were owed for the classes I had taken. I spent 10 weeks fighting with financial aid trying to find out why.By the time I finally found out why, I was weeks into this battle and there was nothing I could do. I did not have almost $4000 to cough up so that I can continue. I was then told that there would not be enough financial aid for me to get a bachelor's degree in my chosen field, that if I changed my major to IT with no focus, I would at least have an Associates of Applied Science degree, but would still have to come up with nearly $4000 in order to do so. So I did all I could to secure the necessary funds to at least end up with an AAS after all my hard work.
Next came the disaster of changing my major AGAIN and getting my classes changed again, and apparently no one had bothered to enter the information I have given them two weeks previous to change my major. The adviser was trying to sign me up for classes that were not in my new major (which said adviser knew nothing about) and was told that I was now signed up for 4 classes in the next semester (which they do not allow) and the change of major had never been entered at all or was entered incorrectly. After 10 weeks of waging war with financial aid, I was not going to waste one more second of my life on this garbage and add another group to the fray. When I took my leave of absence, I had a 3.22 gpa, but got the distinct impression from my academic advisory team that my attendance at Kaplan was no longer welcomed because of my need for a leave of absence (I had attempted to take that leave before and was told it would make a mess of my financial aid - apparently, if you take an loa from Kaplan, they charge more than the cost of the class to do so only they say it is something else).
Either someone in FA is embezzling funds or Kaplan is simply a con - either way Stay Away if you don't want a screw-over in a huge way.
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