I went to university (won't say which) but I was a late enrollee. I applied to a course under the name of Film, Animation, Music and Enterprise (FAME) They accepted my enrolment and I was placed on the course.
In the meantime, and the weeks running up to the start of my course. I was on the phone trying to get the government to pay the tuition fees. You know to set it up, so I can start paying it back to the government, after they pay the university.
I spent the first weeks, sitting in other classes and most of the time without a desk and only a chair. I was never mentioned on any registers and had to remind them after every lecture, that I was in attendance.
The government (Customer Service, who worked for student finance) were telling me that there were no courses registered under that name and because it was not a registered course, no funding could be provided.
In my stupidity, I sought the advice of the Tutor I had been assigned to. He was the same person who was supposed to be heading the course in the following year. when it was ACTUALLY set to go live and be a registered course. I asked him what he thought I should do and he reassured me the course HAD to be registered. He said he would get to the bottom of it for me. He told me he had contacted everyone he could and that he doesn't understand why I am having this problem. He advised me to speak to a student advisor.
It took two weeks to get an appointment with my advisor. In the weeks prior I spent my breaks and dinners sitting in the reception using one of their phones, being passed from department to department. Not understanding that the course wasn't ever registered and taking the word of my Tutor.
Me and the advisor spent 9 hours doing exactly what I was doing on my breaks and dinners, at home and every other opportunity I had and that was on the phone to student finance to try and get some sense out of the situation. She also reassured that the course had to be registered, and didn't believe it when they told us it wasn't. We tried every variation of the courses name barring making up anagrams. The day ended when she started to cry after we got nowhere.
Because the government refused to pay the tuition fees, the debt for the course rightfully fell unto me. The government refused because there was no registered course for them to prove I was actually starting at university.
I had no idea how to approach the situation and the whole process drained me mentally. If I had known for certain back then, that the university must have never registered the course, I would have sought advice then. I was naive and believed what their advisors told me. In this same naivety, I asked if I could enroll on this course again, this time having everything go smoothly with there being other enrollees and they told me, because my fee's weren't paid, my work went unmarked. Which meant I failed. You can't re-enroll on a course you have failed. They advised I do something similar like just Music. I signed up for the course, feeling embarrassed about them saying I had failed... like I ever had a chance.
Then one of the receptionists I had spent at least 90 hours with on my breaks whilst on the phone to student finance told me I could have postponed my course due to circumstances and retook this year, at no extra cost. It was already too late, the debt was already sold on.
The Music course, I couldn't even get my first assignment marked and was suffering from all the problems from the previous year, like they were just haunting me. I felt like it was going to be a repeat and stopped attending (which is where I disgust myself, I was running away from my problems.)
The university asked me for the money and because I couldn't afford to pay in full, they sold it on to debt collectors, who wanted £50 a day for the next 18 months. The debt is now somewhere near £45,000+ if I am correct in what I know. I have never paid a penny of it, and believe I shouldn't have to. However it's creeping on me and stopping me from even finding a job. Nobody wants to know me after they have done credit checks. I feel like a criminal, I probably am.
It's having a serious knock-on effect when it comes to all aspects of my life. It's starting to ruin my relationship because it's causing me stress and anxiety. I feel like I am inside a prison, only the walls are transparent. I can't see them, every so often I will walk into one and it will remind me I am nothing, that I am failing in turn destroying any self-esteem I had. Making me feel like I am worthless and everyone that's said it was right.
The reason I am posting is in the glimmer of hope, that someone can tell me i've got a case and chance to have the debt cleared. I'm not a naive kid anymore, my thoughts are grounded in the dirty, rotting reality that is life. I know that there's probably a piece of paper somewhere that I have signed in desperation to fix the problem that will exempt me from any laws that protect me.
[TL;DR]
I believe a university, advertised a course that wasn't ready, registered or even funded that year.
The same course I enrolled on and the government refused to fund. In the end it landed me in a lot of debt, and not the kind where I pay it back to the government with an earnings limit before they take anything. Real debt with real debt collectors.
This is now taking over my life, I cannot find employment as 90% of employers will do credit history checks and fail me. So I don't hear anything back after the interview stage. The ones that don't are the ones that nobody wants to work for and the staff there are treated more like robotic animals.
If they did falsely advertise the course, do I have a chance at getting the debt cleared? Or am I just grasping at straws in desperation?
Submitted July 31, 2017 at 01:18AM by IsThisParanoia http://ift.tt/2uaMGMu
