Early leaver from uni in 2007/08 year - tuition fee dispute

dotty321

Hello

Any help with the below query would be greatly appreciated.

I started university in September 2007 and for various reasons, decided to leave my course at the end of the first term, my official withdrawal date was 8th January 2008.

At the time, being young (and lazy!), I neglected to sort out my student finance. I had a tuition loan (£3,070) and had received two instalments of my maintenance loan (approx £1,600).

I have since been in employment and repay through PAYE. I recently phoned the SLC to dispute the tuition fee repayments, due to me only attending the course for one term.

SLC advised me that I needed to contact my old university who should have notified the SLC when I left uni in Jan 2008 to reduce the amount of owed tuition fees (I'm not sure how correct this advice is)

Upon contacting the uni, I spoke to a course administrator who plainly said none of the tuition fees are refundable, even if I had left on the first day of term as "that is the rules". I find this hard to believe, as I the payment schedule I received in 2007 from SLC states that they pay the university in the tuition fees in two lump sums on 6th February 2008 (£1,535) and 7th May 2008 (£1,535). Therefore, if the university notified SLC that I left on 8th Jan, shouldn't the SLC should have ceased payments to the university?

Unfortunately I cannot find any documentation from the uni or SLC on rules about leaving during the first year.

Does anybody know if there is a way I can fight this? I assume it will obviously a dispute with the university.

Many thanks

Helix

When SLC pay the tuition fees is of no relevance to what you owe the university. On your system if you stayed past 1st December then SLC would pay the tuition fee loan to the university.

The University would normally charge pro-rata though for the weeks you were studying though. You will probably need to speak to the student finance department at the university, the course administrator is unlikely to know the ins and outs of how tuition fees work.

Taiko

At the same time though, the university are under no obligation to reduce the amount of fees. Likewise, if you applied to SFE for the maximum fee loan, they would've paid the maximum.

I think you'll be stonewalled by the university though. After all, it is 6 years since the event..

dotty321

Thanks all, I suppose it is worth a try!