Alissa Jones, a first-generation college student at Howard University, said she’s a couple classes away from the finish line — that was until she discovered she owed a huge amount of money to Howard.
“Right now, it says I owe that 57,540-something, like I owe the whole thing,” Jones said. “[…] If you have any type of hold, you can not register for class, but with these, obsessive amounts of money that they’re saying we owe, it’s almost like, that’s not one semester’s worth of tuition, at all, that money has been there, but where? And why are we just now finding out about it?”
Jones said in her previous four years at the university, she was on scholarship and never owed more than $15,000 per year.
Jones said she received notice of her new balance, nearly four times what she’s used to owing, after she said Howard University transitioned to a new student financial platform.
It’s not clear when Howard launched its new student platform.
Out of the 14,500 students at Howard, Jones said she’s one of the 1,000 students the university announced has past due balances.
News4 heard from multiple students in similar situations, like Kimora Hughes, a junior who said she first learned she owed $15,000 dollars in April.
“It’s just been extremely stressful, one, because I feel like the people in our offices are not communicating amongst each other,” Hughes said.
From there, Hughes said her family took out a loan. But after several attempts to confirm that Howard received the money, she said financial aid representatives told her they had no record of her loan.
“There’s no way Howard never received this, but I have the email of the loan being approved,” she said.
Students who live out of state told News4 when they call the financial aid office, sometimes it goes straight to voicemail or no one picks up.
They said in some cases, they rely on other students who live in or near D.C. to go to the financial aid office physically to speak with someone – their friend then calls them and then they’re able to speak with someone about their account.
Right now, students said they have until next Thursday to pay their balance or enroll in a payment plan.
News4 reached out to the university requesting an interview and provided a list of questions about the concerns raised by students, including the new student platform Bison Hub, why did the university need to switch to the platform, what actions plans were in place when the university rolled out the new platform to communicate to students about their outstanding balances and what payment options do students have if they have an outstanding balance?
Howard acknowledged the questions, but News4 is still waiting for answers.
In a statement last week, the university said during the past academic year – during the transition from the old student platform bison web to the new platform, Bison Hub – some student account updates were delayed between May and June.
The university said it offers institutional aid – which most recently totaled $210 million to help students.
While some students said they were excited about getting closer to the college finish line, they said they now fear that may never happen.
“I don’t really have any next steps, I’ve been praying, I have a lot of faith,” Jones said. “[…] Hopefully, it works out in my favor.”
Multiple students that News4 spoke with said they have created online fundraising efforts like GoFundMe to try and raise the money they need to continue at Howard.
from Local – NBC4 Washington https://ift.tt/sFQtLYk
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