Let me preface this by apologizing I did not mean to upset anybody, and I should have just posted a new thread.
My university financial aid official told me because there were no checks in the system that she over-awarded me 518 of a teach grant. Even though they were obligated to pay the ed dept for the error they want me to replace or offset the amount they had to make right, now they say I owe an institutional debt, like I should have to pay for the mistake they made or so I see it. They sent it for collections.
I’ve read everything about the teach grant over payments, I will quote the legal information institute; “the institution is liable for a TEACH Grant overpayment if the overpayment occurred because the institution failed to follow the procedures set forth in this part or in34 CFR part 668. The institution must restore an amount equal to the overpayment to its TEACH Grant account.”
I graduated but then got very sick with CTEPH, i do not have the money to cover the debt. I also don’t know the ins and outs of over payments so was hoping someone could shed some light on it. If the mistake was not made I would not have to pay the over award amount, so I guess two questions- 1. who is liable and 2. What are the procedures exactly?
Thanks in advance. I appreciate any feedback and I apologize for the hassle.
I apologize if this sounds harsh, but are you saying that you received money you were not entitled to and you don’t feel you should pay it back?
Here is another way to loom at it: if you inadvertently overpaid for a service or a product you would be okay with letting the business keep your money if the business was having financial troubles?
Can you contact the collection agency about a payment plan? Do you have family members who can help?
I wouldnt have received it if the official looked my account over before funds were disbursed, is all i was saying, i do not understand any of this , i get that it was overpaid, but my issue is it wasnt found out until after the semester ended and if i was notified much earlier it may have been easier; it shouldn’t have happened to begin with is what i am saying. I guess i am saying she admitted she made the error, i didn’t misrepresent, and i hardly understand the lingo of this all. I guess i understand it but it is pretty crappy feeling just because it was her mistake to begin with. Anyways, thanks for your feedback.
If it was their mistake, you should get to pay it back as you can. We’re not talking thousands of dollars. Can you pay $50/mo? If so, it will take less than a year. Tell them no interest or charges. I’m surprised they are already threatening collections. I guess they won’t be expecting any alum contributions in the years to come?
So if the situation was reversed, then you *would *be fine with letting your college keep your overpaid money even though you made a mistake and didn’t catch it until later?
You need to be careful when interpreting statutes. That portion of federal code might merely discuss the university’s obligations to reimburse, say, the state, instead of acting as a shield for you, the student, against the university’s procedural error.
What are the procedures in 34 CFR § 668? You quote the following language: “if the overpayment occurred because the institution failed to follow the procedures set forth in this part or in34 CFR part 668.” I’m not going to read the law, but what are the procedures, and in your case, were they followed?
I was asking for that clarification exactly because I don’t know Essay, thank you for the comment. I cannot be 100% on top of everything especially with major health issues, there’s a reason colleges employ financial aid officials. Life happens so please don’t patronize me, I know I wasn’t entitled to it, I also didn’t ask for it. It was given to me because of oversight. So I should be responsible for the financial aid officers blunder, because they didn’t look at my financial aid package they put together? After all i wouldn’t have gotten the money if they weren’t sloppy which means I wouldn’t have been overpaid. And on top of that this could have been brought to my attention long before it was.
You would have owed the money if they had not made the mistake and you owe it now. What I would do is request that a no interest payment plan be set up and your collections referral be removed from your credit rating.
Mistakes happen in life and hardships occur because of them. We have to deal with them and move on.
I wouldn’t have owed it had they not made the oversight they said they didn’t have any checks in the system to prevent the overaward. I appreciate your answer.
The point was, you would have owed that amount to the school to cover billed expenses at that time if you hadn’t erroneously received the grant amount.
If the school wants to play it this way, the only thing that matters here is the law, and I rather doubt anyone on here is going to be able to tell you what the law is exactly. CC is a good resource for many issues, but this one might just be too detailed unless you got very lucky and a lawyer that happened to be versed in this area saw this. Pretty unlikely.
Personally I rather disagree with those that are saying that you should have been tracking the amounts and that the situation is the same if they had underpaid you or if you had overpaid a retailer, for example. With tax deductions and possibly other deductions from a check, I certainly wouldn’t know 100% if my paycheck was off a few dollars until it came time to file my returns. I don’t know what the situation is with grants such as you got, I imagine different grants are treated differently.
Besides, they are the ones with specialized personnel and software that is custom designed for handling these things. Why in the world would it be only on you to track this? They have put you in a difficult situation because you reasonably assumed the amounts were correct and spent the money. It was their error (malpractice, if you will) that caused you to be in the situation. Are they to be held blameless? For relatively small amounts, which I think this is, their mistake does have costs to you, and so they should just call it even. It would be different if the amounts were such that it should have been obvious, like $5000 more in a paycheck than you should expect.
But that is all how I think it should be handled humanly and ethically. The law may not technically see it that way, and I doubt it could possibly be worth your using a lawyer in this case. I think the person that suggested a payment of some small amount per month is probably right, if the school won’t accept any of the blame. That might be another approach on your part, wherein you could say “Listen, we both have fault here so let’s split the amount”. Now you are down to $259 which maybe is low enough that you can just get it off your plate and be done with it.
BTW, you have nothing to apologize for on this site. People might not have the opinions you want to hear, but that is useful since that might be (and apparently is) the position the school is taking. It might come across as harsh, but again that is sometimes how things are. I don’t see it as quite as black and white as some others apparently do. And you certainly don’t have to apologize for resurrecting an old thread. New members do it a lot, and I do mean a lot. We just point it out and ask that you start a fresh thread. No problem.