Pennsylvania State University Office of Student Aid — Local services in College Township

I am a PSU alum with one son who is also an alum, and a child entering this year. While I think Penn State is an exceptional academic institution with world class professors, their financial aid department has the absolute worse customer service I have ever experienced anywhere. Let me be very clear; I am not criticizing the actual employees in the financial aid department. For the most part, I have found them to be friendly and helpful. I am commenting primarily on the fact that there are FAR too few employees to handle to workload. I should note that I have four children who have already been through college and I have not had this same issue with the other universities my kids attended. I know that Penn State handles thousands of financial aid requests each year, and for the cost of tuition, they should hire enough staff to answer phones/ emails in a timely fashion. It should not take two weeks to get a return email that doesn't even answer the given questions. If you can even get through on the phone, you wait on hold endlessly for them to answer only to eventually get a message directing you to leave your number for a call back. Yesterday, after calling 6 times, I was finally able to get in the queue and waiting an hour and 45 minutes for my call to be answered, and no, I am not exaggerating. Penn State, please treat your customers as if their money and time are valued, as would any other business for which people pay an enormous sum of money. The professors understand that students are paying tens of thousands of dollars to be at Penn State, and they provide a level of academic rigor commensurate with that fact. The administrative offices and staff should be equipped to treat students and families with the same level of respect and high quality service. Use some of our tuition money to hire more people at a decent wage and this issue could be...

Penn State Univ. Office of Financial Aid deserves NO stars. They engage in Fraudulent Billing, which is not a surprise to me. They fraudulently billed my son, falsly claiming he did not attend his classes that he enrolled in. Then, they said he did not attend a specific course, although he enrolled in the course. This is also false. They've refused to name the course or the Instructor. Thankfully an honest staff member informed me that the culprit of the fraudulent billing is Josiah Banks. This comes as no surprise to me, as Banks has breached my confidential student information to a third-party in the past, yet refused to respond to phone calls, messages, or emails regarding the same. They fraudulently charged my son $925 and immediately sent him to collections "before" they gave him official notice. This is what they do. They are notorious for hiding wrongdoing. It does not surprise me that they went into student apts during COVID evacuations and stole student property. It does not surprise me that they filed fraudulent reports for 7+ years with the Dept of Defense. We are seeking legal action against the university as a result of their fraudulent billing, as well as the person who did it, in their individual capacity. The great thing is that I tape-record everything! Jurys love evidence. Staff in the office of student aid even refused to give their name! This too, is on tape, as is...

There is absolutely no structure to this department and getting a hold of them is practically impossible. I've experienced everything from automated messages hanging up on me to just an outright, old fashioned busy signal. I feel like they change it by the week.

I may be facing collections agencies because of this department. I applied for and was approved for a private loan to cover the costs of my summer tuition. Although I was made aware by this office that they received the loan approval, no one has applied it to my account. Therefore I still have holds on my account, I can't register for fall classes, and they are sending me automated, threatening messages to turn me into collections agencies for the summer tuition that has technically been paid. Mind you, this is all happening in august, less than 30 days after summer semester even ended. I've been desperately trying to get a hold of people to rectify the situation before they turn me into a collections agency and it seems so hopeless. When I have gotten in touch with someone, they've been uninformed and just transferred me around.

I feel like a lot of these people are hired virtually with little to no experience and who ironically, likely don't have college degrees themselves but are entrusted to help students navigate the financial aspects of getting their education. It's a shame and...