Federal loans being cut for online students?

[Sam J.]

A friend was just informed (with no warning) that her school loans had been cancelled by her school, the day after the semester started. This was a couple weeks after her school informed her (in December) that she'd get max loans this semester, because her cost of attendance included tuition, books, housing, and misc fees. The reason they gave her is 'Since you're an online student only, you don't have the expenses, such as travel, that classroom students have- and your loans were cancelled because it's no longer in the budget'. This, despite just having been informed that her cost of attendance included her housing? (That school has no on campus housing). Now she's frantic about paying rent, etc.

When she persisted, they sent her the 13/14 budget from the feds, and sure enough it said 'costs for housing are usually excluded for correspondence students, unless a class requires a residential program as part of it's normal curriculum'. Then the school told her 'if you late register for at least one classroom course, you can then reapply to receive loans later this semester', but otherwise, there 'is no opportunity to appeal'. She has a 3.9 GPA, is in good standing, and this was to be her last semester before graduating this Summer.

If this is the new policy, I suspect half the colleges in America will be closing since students won't be eligible to get loans. I know of many schools that only OFFER online classes.

[elkpark]

Frankly, it sounds good to me. Is this one of the proprietary schools? Too many online programs are borderline scams, IMO, and I'm glad to see the Feds clamping down on them.

[Katie71275]

What kind of program is it? I am in an online program(but it's my RN to BSN) through a brick and mortar school. I had no problems at all with my loans for this Spring semester.