Financial Aid: Horrible Encounters

Based on CSU Students

By: Treasure Davis

April 27, 2017

Financial aid has been and is still a big issue with Columbus State University college students. Students have been experiencing lack of communication, rude attitudes, false information, or even mixing up student’s identity. With all this going on around colleges in the United States of America today, Columbus State University is only a speck of the colleges that have had multiple issues with financial aid. With all the miscommunication issues that goes on here at CSU, the CSU news team discovered a few horrible experiences of student run-ins with financial aid.

Jordan Carter

Jordan Carter , a Junior majoring in Exercise Science called financial aid over the summer. He came to start the semester in fall 2014 and got hit with unexpected news that after being told everything was fine, financial gave Carter the run around and found out they were missing a parent signature.

“The lady who was helping us was very rude. My mom said that she remembered signing the form, but the lady argued that she didn’t. My mom had a fit and went off on the rude financial aid worker.”

This incident occurred once before in Spring 2014 when he first came to CSU.

“This was the second time this happened” said Carter. “We would call and make sure everything was alright and they would say everything was covered then when it’s time for school to start they contact me with an issue.”

Javonte Smith

Javonte Smith, a Sophomore majoring in Business, had a different situation more severe. They mixed up Smith with someone else with the same first name, but different last name. After identifying that they had two different social security numbers and student identity numbers they still told him he had to pay this ridiculous balance. After accusing him of staying on campus and taking summer classes, that he owed the school 7,000. It got to the point where they tried to kick him out of the dormitory immediately.

“I felt they was full of bull shit, very unprofessional, and don’t know how to do their jobs.”

After dragging Smith through this nightmare taking five hours for them to realize they made a mistake and notified him saying “We got you and another student mixed up.” Without even an apology Smith was very upset.

This is the hardest time for students having to deal with the careless mistakes of financial aid. This adds stress to the students and their families, because they threaten to kick them out of housing, drop their classes and have them try to get back in those classes after the fact, or even saying they cannot come back to school. On top of the rude financial aid workers that you must talk to they are messing up your account because they have overlooked something. Not to mention the ridiculous process time frame they give you in which the documents must process followed by the hold that goes on your account.

These are only two of the horrific stories of how financial aid have been slashing students throughout the years, there is no telling how many horrible stories are out there and how severe they are compared to these guys two stories.