Discovered the for-profit college I graduated from (which also recently closed down) may have been engaging in financial aid fraud; need advice

Edit for location: Minnesota, United States

Hello, legaladvice! I am seeking advice, clarification, resources, etc. for navigating the situation described in the title and was wondering if any of y'all might be able and interested in providing any relevant assistance. A more thorough elaboration of the issue at hand is below:

So, I got suckered into one of those for-profit schools that have been going down recently. I’ve always felt like the school was a rip off, but couldn’t specifically nail down what was off about it because of the whole, ya know, being a teenager and never having been through the higher education process.

Each semester I would meet with an advisor who told us what classes to take. Despite being a really great student and never having any issues academically, suddenly in my final semester I was told I was missing required upper level liberal arts credits, and that none were available to me or fit my schedule. I was told I would need to take an additional semester to finish these credits. Unfortunately, I was out of financial aid options (only qualified for federal loans and had a parent pass on GI education benefits) and literally could not continue my education. I fought the school, hounded every department head and school official I could. I insisted that if I was missing credits, it was absolutely no fault of my own. I had followed exactly what my school advisor told me each semester. Eventually my persistence paid off, and the school told me they would “make an exception” and allow me to graduate.

Like many graduates from this place, I’ve just kind of moved on and tried to make the most of the shitty degree I received. Like many, I just sort of felt embarrassed for going to this school, and just felt lucky that I was allowed to graduate, so I tried to move on.

Last year the school suddenly closed on very short notice. It left tons of faculty without jobs, students with no housing, displaced dozens of international students with no resources, and did little to assist current and former students. (there were many individuals who stayed on without pay to help as much as they could, I don’t want to brush them under the rug.) but it just ended things in a really bad place for tons of people. This got me really angry, and I started talking to as many former classmates as I was still in contact with. It’s been 8 years since I left the school, but I quickly found that a lot of my classmates had similar experiences; sudden required credits, new graduation requirements, general confusion and strange circumstances surrounding their experience. I started casting a wider net and talking to more and more students. I found a consistent patter but lots of variation. Some students had to take additional semesters, and were pressured into higher course loads (even if it meant re-taking courses they had already passed) to keep them above full-time enrollment and therefore eligible for more federal money. The school didn’t offer housing for most of its existence and students were responsible for expensive housing in our downtown metro area. Most of us used our loans to do this. Many were forced to quit with one or two credits to go, no degree but the same debt. Some students fought back like me, made a huge fit, or started getting social media attention, and suddenly they would “make an exception” and let them graduate. For the last year I’ve been hearing horror stories with no real direction of where to take it.

Last month with the court order that the Borrowers Defense applications would be processed again, I picked my project back up and started organizing people. I’ve spoken to over 100 students from the last 10-15 years of the school, and have found countless instances of students facing unexpected graduation requirements. We began comparing our course catalogs from the year and programs we started, and have consistently found that our transcripts don’t match the degrees we supposedly have. Once this clicked, the group I have organized all began comparing their transcripts to their course catalogs, and so far we have not found a single person who met their degree requirements. In a lot of instances you can even follow the graduation requirement changes as their transcript goes on through each course catalog. And we’re not talking like, “this class isn’t available, so I took something similar”…..we’re talking like, Music majors who did not take Music Theory….or business majors who are missing core business credits.

I spoke to the state-level agency that has been handling the school’s closure, was told specifically that when a student begins a program, they are to stay in the course catalog they started in. If there are graduation requirement changes or general changes to the course catalog, only new, incoming students are subject to the new requirements/classes. However, their office won’t investigate due to how long I have been out of the school. (And the school being closed) My understanding from my research is that a school’s course catalog isn’t usual updated as often as this school was (yearly) and when they do, it’s subject to the approval from the accreditation board. This board depends on what accreditation the school has, which brings us to the next biggest drama with the school….They lied about their accreditation status. At the time of the closing, there were multiple ongoing lawsuits pertaining to this. Not only do we have bullshit degrees, they don’t mean what the school told us they do, so we can’t continue on our educations at other schools without massive additional debt. With no accreditation board actually in change of the requirements, the school updated their requirements yearly, and funneled everyone into each new course catalog each year. This causes people to take tons of extra electives, while missing core classes. We were entirely defrauded by this school. The state agency in charge of investigating these predatory for-profit schools won’t investigate.

Overall I have talked to SO many people who experienced what seems to be clear fraud. I’m trying to organize and help by sharing what I learn with these other students, but I by no means know what I’m doing. I think we qualify for the Borrowers Defense to Repayment (in terms of federal loans) but really want to get an airtight argument put together before I submit my application. I’m also looking for any other advice or agencies/organizations I should try to contact about the situation. PHEW Thanks!

TL; DR- For profit college was lying about accreditation and altering graduation requirements yearly to force students into taking additional semesters. School is closed, filed for bankruptcy, and state agency assigned to investigate the school will not look into it because of how long it’s been since I’ve personally been in school. Class action or civil suit would be pointless because there’s “no money anywhere”. Hoping to get my federal loans dismissed, but want to build my case first.

Submitted November 20, 2018 at 10:45PM by 4ProfitCollegeBlues https://ift.tt/2DA7GVe