I have received a bachelors degree a few years back. Recently decided to go back to school and enter a PTA associate degree program. I had filled out FASA and made sure to answer that I have received a Pell grant in the past. When I worked with financial aide office to do my financing they accidentally gave me a Pell grant. I did this back in October. I was able to forgo the first quarter and begin classes in January. 5 weeks in, begining of February I get a call from financial aide office to stop by. They inform me that I had been accidentally awarded a Pell grant. Now they want to adjust my payment plan to makeup the added tuition which would increase by 25% without Pell grant. This information should of been brought to my attention before I began attending classes, maybe with the information I would of decided against going back to school and pursue a PTA degree.
Anyone have any idea what my options are? It’s a mistake the financially aide office made, shouldn’t they have to cover the cost of the Pell grant? How do I know they accidentally telling me I have a Pell grant was an unethical tactic to get me to sign off and enter the program? Universities have gotten in trouble for inappropriate recruitment tactics. Should I stand pat and refuse to adjust my payment plan?
You already have a BA so you aren’t (weren’t) eligible for the Pell grant. The school has to repay it to the government, and want to recover it from you. It is a pretty good deal that they are putting it as part of your payment plan and letting you finish out the semester.
Your options are to repay the grant or drop out of school. They might give you an option to stretch out the repayment amount if you can’t afford it right now. If you want to drop out, you may be able to and get a full refund. That’s up to the school, but they do have to repay the government for the Pell.
You are now 4 weeks past the time they found the mistake. What have you done during those 4 weeks? You may have missed all drop dates.
There is no question on FAFSA that asks if you have received a Pell grant before. There is a question that asks if you already have or will receive a bachelor’s degree before you start the academic year that you are completing FAFSA for.
You obviously knew that you weren’t eligible for another Pell grant. How did you think that your school was being paid for? Did you look at the documentation from the financial aid office before classes started that would have clued you in to how much you would have to pay and where any other payments were coming from?
You say the college “accidentally” gave you a Pell Grant. This means you KNEW you were not entitled to it.
You need to pay it back. Frankly, you knew you weren’t entitled to this grant and NEVER should have accepted it in the first place. You should have called this error to the attention of the school yourself.
And really…the coat they are asking you to assume is what you should have been paying all along.
YOU filled out your FAFSA. YOU were asked specifically:
Will you have your first bachelor’s degree before you begin the 2017-2018 school year?
Yes
No
If you said no, then you lied on the FAFSA , which is fraud and you took the funds knowing that you were not entitled to them. You were found to no longer be eligible for a PELL grant so the grant that was distributed to you in error now must have to be repaid
You are being asked to pay what you are supposed to be paying. You were NOT entitled to the Pell Grant at all…and really, your first post in this thread implies you KNEW that.
In addition, this is not a false recruiting tool. The Pell is max $5900. For one semester, it’s half that amount.
You can stand your ground and refuse to pay…but if you do, the school can stand its ground too…and refuse to give you credit for this term with an unpaid balance, refuse to let you register for future courses until the balance is paid, and refuse to release your transcript because you have an unpaid balance.
You need to work out how you are going to pay this bill.
Did you already take the Direct Loan for this term? I believe you can take that even if you have a bachelors degree already and haven’t exceeded the aggregate limit.
I do have to ask…you have a bachelors degree. Were there NO jobs you could get with that degree. Why are you doing an associates degree now? That’s a bit…backwards.
No, even if they did make an error they don’t have to give you the money. The grant itself has to go back to the government because you aren’t eligible, and the school likely doesn’t have the money to give you a grant even if they wanted to offer one.
As stated above, your eligibility is determined by what you enter on your FAFSA. I don’t believe it will let you move on if you leave a required question blank, so you may want to check your FAFSA to verify everything you entered.
Unless this is a for profit school, that’s highly unlikely. Colleges can’t afford to have students who can’t pay.
Which college is this? If you’re working on an associate’s degree, it sounds like a public community college. If you refuse to pay, you’ll be dropped from your classes. You won’t be able to get your transcript, so you won’t be able to enroll in another school. Colleges will know you attended this school because it will show up on the national database. If paying will be a struggle, go talk to the financial aid office to see if you can spread payments out over a longer period, but you have no basis for refusing to pay.
I never lied on FASA I answered questions honestly and said I had received a bachelors already. Financial office made the mistake and accidentally gave me the grant I wasn’t qualified for. It’s been a few weeks and I’ve taken measure to make sure I’ll be able to pay the increased monthly payment.
It used to be a for profit college but that ended last summer. School was under probation for unethical recruiting practices and those who ran the financial side sold it. No longer under probation and is now non-profit.
Thanks for the help, just wanted to make sure I’m not letting the school persuade me to let them off the hook. I understand what a Pell grant is. In general, I make a mistake I pay for it. College makes a mistake I still pay for it! Awesome!
They’ve put you into the position you were in (you pay the same amount) before they gave you the Pell grant in error. I think they should waive any late charges or fees. Yes, you will pay the same amount for tuition you would have paid before the error. They will be out the money during the time it takes you to pay it back.
Colleges make mistakes - they cannot possibly process aid without computers, but the computers don’t know everything. Mistakes are caught when humans go through things to find issues. I do agree that if you have late fees, you should ask that they be waived. If you have loan eligibility, hopefully you can borrow to cover the cost of the Pell you had to pay back.