Ashford University - B.A. Psychology

Love the classes - frustrated with admin

By: piper4915 (In Progress) on July 17, 2009

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Review:

I have been enrolled with Ashford since January 2007 and my experiences were great up until last October.  The school changed it's stipend disbursement process requiring 7 weeks of coursework completed before receiving 30% of a students stipend and the remaining 70% would be disbursed upon completion of 14 weeks.  I have had to request economic hardship 2 times because I cannot afford their $100 books every 5 weeks without the funds that I am accruing interest on.  Ashford enrollment and academic advisors are great, but their financial aid dept cancelled my loans 2 days before disbursement claiming I failed a course.  This course was re-taken the previous year and passed, so it was a mistake on my FSA's part.  The worst part of this refers to the fact that I found out about the cancellation by mail through Iowa Student Loan, NOT Ashford.  They didn't even call to inform me of the cancellation.  The financial aid manager stated she would try to recover the funds, but it is now July and I lost $1300 of pell grant money due to their mistake.  My funds finally arrived on July 7th and I'm still awaiting the hardship approval - but I had to drop the current class because I couldn't afford the book.  I have been paying out-of-pocket since May for expenses that my $3500 stipend should have absorbed.  I am now looking into transferring as I have trying to contact all of my advisors all week stating my disappointment, and I still have not recieved the time of day.  Having a 3.6 gpa obviously doesn't mean that you'll get treated as a person here - not a good school if you don't have the $ to fork out $100 every 5 weeks for books.