Grand Canyon University [GCU]

Contact the Federal Ombudsman that hold your FAFSA loans she resolved my issue for me instantly. Thank God for people like her. She was wonderful. Good Luck.

yvonne christie

Jolene & Silvia,

Hi Ladies, I completely agree with everything that both of you have said. Grand Canyon University has no professional standards and not one single Christian Ethic.
Here is briefly my story: I started at GCU 5/5/2008 Master's program in Business Leadership. I graduated 4/30/2010. We can all do the math on this time frame and getting an MBA in two years means attending 8 week quarters back to back to back. My GPA was 3.8 or so. I was accepted into their Doctoral program, but the enrollment counselor was so forceful and gave me quite a few things to do and I only had 24 hours. I had only called to inquire about the Doctoral program. I was still in school, starting finals. Long story short, I went ahead and applied. I got some serious wake-up calls prior to starting, like I looked at my financial statements, they kept telling me I was a full-time Graduate student, but was always late posting me on the Federal CLEARINGHOUSE WEBSITE AND WHEN THEY DID< THEY LISTED ME AS HALF-TIME. GRRRRRRR all my under graduate loans went into default. I spent the whole two going round and round about this.

I am currently attending the University of the Rockies (LOVE IT) for my PhD and now my funding has been pulled because GCU failed to notify my lenders and the clearinghouse I was even attending school since January 2010. I am in complete default and nobody wants to hear that it is a lie. FRAUD is what it is.

My loan was sold from Granite to EdFinancial and just totally defaulted and is now back at ECMC? I tried to explain and GCU the telephone calls. OMG. I have made 21 calls in 7 day period and no one returns the calls.

Anyway, I feel sick to my stomach, my whole life has come to a grinding halt. Finally, the financial aid guy sends me an e-mail saying they have one way to determine a student status and a totally different one for the Federal loans. So, yes I am full time, but they keep two sets of books. I AM LIKE THIS GUY DID NOT JUST PUT THIS IN WRITING FOR ME!N YES YES HE DID.

So, my suggestion is that we band together and make formal complaints with the BBB of Arizona and I was told by someone who responded to my post...well here is what they suggested: Contact the PPSE and file a complaint there. It seems to be the only agency they respond to. Go to az.gov and you can link to it from there.

So, I am going to file a complaint with them today. Then there is also a Federal Omsbudman that I was told helps resolves unresolvable issues.

Here is a link for the [redacted]s " /URL removed/

You know we all have great educations and if they want a battle we can give them a battle. Personally all I ever wanted was for them to do their job. Simple basic decency let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. I have no time for this and it breaks my heart and it is just not right that I lose time sleep, my health over trying to get them to do their job the way they claimed they would. They have no formal grievance criteria. I have called and written everybody at GCU. I am done now I am going forward and they will be held accountable.

Please feel free to contact me at geeyc@hotmail.com

Peace,
yvonne

PS
Here is that e-mail from GCU financial: {I took 18 units per year}

Hi Yvonne,

Thank you for giving me a bit of time to get back with you today. I just left you a message on your cell phone & was unable to get through on your home number (line was busy). I wanted to inform you that I have checked with our office of financial aid and confirmed that there are two types of definitions when it comes to a student’s full or part time status. The first is our internal academics definition which is the part in which you quoted the 09-10 GCU policy handbook. Therefore, internally – we defined you as full time for taking 5+ credit hours a semester. However, through the clearing house, we follow the standard Department of Education guidelines and define a graduate student as follows: Full time - 9 credit hours+; Three-Quarter Time – 7-8 credit hours; Half time – 5-7 credit hours; less than half time – 4 or less credit hours.

In summary, we defined you as full-time at our university for the purposes of academics towards your pursuit of your degree and as you were a year around student. However, the clearing house defined you based on the above guidelines despite what we considered you. You may want to double check this with your lenders, the NSLDS (see nslds.ed.gov) and the Department of Education. Here is the portion regarding financial aid in our policy book:

Jolene: I agree with you when you write: "I never saw that coming, and this university has been very unprofessional in communicating with me. For everything i have found out, i have called there has been no communication anywhere. I am now according to my e-mail account supposed to sign a document that says i am not enrolled anymore".
At GCU there is NO ONE that is interested in talking to students or addressing any issues other than tuition fees. They have no contact numbers for anyone other than their "call center" where no one is ever available to "take your call". I even researched the internet trying to address an academic grievance. I was referred to a Mrs. Faith Weese who never contacted me back. I called emailed managers and even their CEO. All I ever got was e newly appointed “advisor” (part timer), who one day told me the process could take months and the next day called me to tell me the issue had been denied. No GCU manager ever returned my emails or calls. I was already on the hook for $50, 000 dollar student loan. But what do they care! Once they have collected your tuition or financial aid students are irrelevant to this school.