Dropped out after two weeks

I have a friend who is seriously worried about emails he is has been receiving from collections agency. He had applied and was accepted into Walden university for an online degree. After two weeks he realized he could not afford to pay tuition fees as he had planned due to the fact that he lost his job, so he dropped out by writing an email to the university through his online profile.

He did this because the advise given to him by the enrollment adviser suggested that it was okay to start, then drop if you cannot keep up with payments.

Now the college, through the collections firm keeps threatening him with ’ further escalation’, yet he acted on information given to him by the adviser provided to him by the college, also informed them in-time about his decision to drop out.

At the moment, he cannot access the online profile to provide proof that he did actually email them in time about his dropping out.

They keep ‘raising’ the mount and not its standing at USD 2000 from USD800. What can he do? How serious is this threat? Kindly advise as my friend is so stressed about this. He keeps saying if he had a way to pay even if he only got to be in the online class just for two weeks, he would pay. Problem is, he has no source of income, and depends on family for financial support.