Does anyone else's university enjoy playing games with financial aid?

[NinjaMermaid]

Our school is the WORST, especially since they started this new online "easy to use system". Every semester since Summer 2011 I spend fighting with the interim director of financial aid for our rights as graduate students. Thankfully a little grass roots movement has been able to make some changes to their ridiculous policies, but it seems like every semester something terrible happens to a large percentage of grad students. This semester it happens to be that the school miscalculated everyone's funding totals so that people who got extra loans are now having to pay back thousands of dollars within the next two months. I have been lumped into this category even though I totaled everything up and verified its validity before accepting. I have the money in my savings - that's not the point - the point is that they should not be allowed to do this!

[Eigen]

Talk to your graduate/graduate and professional student association/student government. We were just able to push through a really nice bunch of reforms through our schools financial aid system. Our graduate and professional student government got together with all of the undergraduate student government, and quite vocally complained about the process. It will be a few semesters before we really see how effective we were, but the administration is promising a lot more care and oversight to the process now, so if we keep on top of it the situation should improve quite dramatically.

[ktel]

Grad students at my university are actually unionized and it looks like we might go on strike soon. The funding process is therefore spelled out quite clearly and very regulated.

[NinjaMermaid]

That is already in the works Eigen and why we have been able to correct some problems. Just like your school, we will only see little changes each semester; the time it takes to correct these stupid problems is ludicrous. Also NY state just passed some pretty insane regulations that effect public universities, which give the school full control and power over anything funding related. Essentially they are allowed, by law, to do almost anything.

We do have an organized union for TA's and GA's but there is no union for just graduate students. We also have an formal grad association and they help as much as they can. I was really just curious if other schools suffer this or if NY is some kind of "special case".

Edited February 17, 2012 by NinjaMermaid

[eco_env]

That is already in the works Eigen and why we have been able to correct some problems. Just like your school, we will only see little changes each semester; the time it takes to correct these stupid problems is ludicrous. Also NY state just passed some pretty insane regulations that effect public universities, which give the school full control and power over anything funding related. Essentially they are allowed, by law, to do almost anything.

We do have an organized union for TA's and GA's but there is no union for just graduate students. We also have an formal grad association and they help as much as they can. I was really just curious if other schools suffer this or if NY is some kind of "special case".

Aren't most schools (public or not) allowe to do whatever they want with funding? But they want good grad students, so that's their incentive to provide good funding.

Edited February 17, 2012 by eco_env

[NinjaMermaid]

Aren't most schools (public or not) allowe to do whatever they want with funding? But they want good grad students, so that's their incentive to provide good funding.

It actually has nothing to do with the graduate programs. This problem has to do with both how and when the school's financial aid department doles out money every semester, regardless of whether it is a fellowship, stipend, loan, etc AND determines how much money each student is allowed to have per year. Our department is fine.

[lewin]

You got extra money so you needed fewer loans? That doesn't sound like a problem, it sounds like a windfall! (Though I see the irritation at poor planning.)

[NinjaMermaid]

You got extra money so you needed fewer loans? That doesn't sound like a problem, it sounds like a windfall! (Though I see the irritation at poor planning.)

I'm not sure you understand the problem... These people spent the money already on bills and rent and such because they were told on Aug 14th that it was theirs. So they have to pay it back by May 5th or leave school. Few people have 5 grand sitting around to give back to the school.

Regardless, my situation is getting fixed because I don't let this kind of stuff go. In my case their math was wrong, which would have cost me $2000. I am not alone - I have a list of people in my department that I am trying to help.

I was curious if any other schools deal out these shenanigans. I am kind of surprised.. I guess NY Public has management issues that other places avoid.

[lewin]

I definitely don't understand the problem. Your loans are from the department? Or who are they paying back? Why do they need to leave school? All in all it sounds like a strange setup.You also said "This semester" so I hope you can understand why I would have no idea that the money was from back in August.

My interpretation was: Department says you get $X this term so some students pick up $Y in student loans to make up the difference. Now department says "Actually you're getting X + Z" so now students need to pay back Z in student loan overages. Obviously that wasn't the case.

[NinjaMermaid]

See - it's convoluted right? And my issue was just 1 of the hundreds of different errors reported to students this semester. Regardless, my question was answered; not many schools have problems with financial aid. Hopefully NY gets its head out of its rear end and fixes these issues (and it is the NY SUNY system as a whole). 70% of the problems come from a new software that they are using to control financial aid/funding/loan (ie all money) generation/disbursements and the other 30% comes from poor management of financial aid staff.