To the point where she started crying. She told me she needed the money to pay rent a center or her children would be sleeping on the floor. She ended up not getting the funds in time, dropping out and going in to collections. This was my typical student at UOP.
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It's not so much them 'wanting' the excess funds. It's students that are rude and abusive to advisers and the managers not backing the advisers. I was 10 plus year adviser and way back, if students got rude and abusive they were instructed to be 'adult' and to be constructive and 95% of the time issues were worked out and the managers and advisers worked together to have the students be respectful. Code of Conduct. Then managers started allowing and letting this type of behavior become acceptable and suddenly it's the adviser's fault for not handling the situation and avoiding escalations. Escalations means the manager is then bothered and has to work for a living. I would inherit or have students transferred to me that other advisers could not handle or it was just a good idea to give the student a NEW adviser to de-escalate the situation...you had to read novels of notes to try and figure out what happened with the student over 1 to 2 years of attendance and advice. Or there were no notes at all noting the file. At the end (2014/2015) the students were transferred and re-organized so many times they had 4 to 5 advisers in 18 months and all organization was lost in the shuffle and the last adviser holding the account got blamed for stuff they never did. UOP enrolls sub-par students and many students went to UOP online to get PELL or military benefits. Anyone that starts yelling and screaming they need their PELL or financial aid refunds for rent and such should be reviewed under a code of conduct standard. Do what you want with the money, you have to earn it by attending school and with passing grades anyway and pay it back. But if they take a refund and then quit attending, they then don't understand why they didn't EARN the refund and government recalls funds from UOP leaving them with balance due to UOP. Additionally UOP has the slowest, most inefficient method for processing refunds in the world, so students that were patient and respectful couldn't get a refund done in a timely manner. The whole process is manual, so manual that a finance adviser is sitting at their desk manually with a calculator.....yes manually calculating a refund amount. There are accounts with 80% POST 911, jiggy internal scholarships or UOP first year grants, dropped class refunds, tuition increases, book fee waivers, financial aid and PELL on their accounts and an adviser has to manually calculate what the refund for the student should be. Not computerized ????? I had a student wanting to know his refund amount and got very impatient, and I advised him I was auditing the account for the refund amount and he about fell off his chair when he found I was manually calculating this amount. This is a student attending an IT program and said he couldn't believe we didn't have a computerized method for calculating refunds. Me too brother...welcome to UOP technology and them blaming errors on advisers and blaming advisers for not working fast enough. There was bad behavior on both sides (UOP and students), but in the end the advisers started getting the blame, so UOP could increase enrollment and decrease ethics. Advisers with years of experience were being driven out, fired or volunteered to leave because they could not stand the stress or decreased ethical behavior. Advisers had relationships with students and employers that were years old and all could see the decline in ethics and overall performance at UOP. People can get 5700.00 for approximately 24 credits (with passing grades) income is a consideration. Bachelor level students 12,500 for 24 credits, Master level 20,500 for 24 successful credits, and if they had tuition assistance from employers or VA then this money could all be extra if the VA or employer is paying for their education. Military also got a big per credit hour discount on bachelor level. So you can see how the money/refunds can be significant. The money is intended for educational purposes and if you aren't attending school you are not 'earning' the right to receive or keep this money. Many students would attend long enough to get first disbursements and then drop, causing recall of the funds by Dept of Educ, because they did not attend or complete enough credits (classes with passing grades) to earn the money. All outlined verbally and in writing to students. Complicated process, but greed is the destroyer.
What is sad, is the part that went to UOP was a bigger waste.
OP is right. The majority of my students were like that. Countless times I heard they were going to be evicted if they didn't get their excess funds check. Wasn't UoP supposed to be for WORKING adults?
You all act like it's ridiculous that a student would use financial aid to pay rent. Students at traditional schools use their loans and Pell to cover housing - why is it different for UoP students? That's why cost of attendance is higher than just the cost of tuition at ALL schools - it covers living expenses. If you don't understand the concept of financial aid, don't open your mouth to speak about it. It just makes you look dumb.
I had a student straight up tell me that pell check was going to be used to buy
an Xbox One, weed and porno.
ChasingthePell is right on the money, pun intended. I love it when students call in asking when "their check" or "their money" is coming. Being the Snarky McSnarkerson I am, I proceed in telling them that it's not "their money," it's money they are borrowing from the Federal government to pay for school. Unfortunately, it usually falls on deaf ears.
I've had students tell me that they are planning to use "their check" to pay rent on multiple occasions. I am so used to having conversations with students about the use and misuse of financial aid, I have the responses memorized.
Alot of my students do it for the extra money. Im saying closer to 80% of my students are itching for the extra calling in all the time and barely posting into. Posting only enough to make attendance to get awarded.
I'd say the majority, I'm guessing 75%??? The checks got smaller as tuition went up, some students needed the excess funds for something legit, like a better computer, but there were many stories like this.
@Peck, what percentage of the students were in this situation, of using "excess funds" for rent, etc?
On average, how much were these checks for?
It is true! People would take advantage of the system but UOPX needed the students. Didn't matter if they dropped as long as you got that REG.