HACC, Central Pennsylvania's Community College — Local services in Harrisburg

Most awful experience from this college from start to finish. The staff on campus while going through admissions was beyond unhelpful. I walked into the financial aid office and the guy looked at me and literally said, "why are you here?" I responded I was looking for information for financial aid and he said fill out the FASFA I can't help you with anything. I should have walked out then. The orientation did not help me at all as I was taking online courses and they wouldn't give me any information about them even when I asked. I didn't even know how to log on to my classes or even the website to log on. I had to email the office and ask for that information. The online system was a nightmare, I couldn't access half of what I needed and I couldn't even change my temp password. Complaints to tech support got me nowhere. I went the entire semester using a system that barely worked well enough to complete my work. The class was terrible. The professor might know about college english but I know more than her about regular english. Typos everywhere and when I emailed her with questions about proper punctuation and such she didn't know the answers. She failed to grade my papers until weeks after they were submitted. I made a formatting error and didn't realize it until she finally graded my paper at which point I had already submitted 2 other papers. She dropped the grades on those papers because "I did not listen to feedback". Well I didn't get feedback until a week AFTER I had already submitted those other two papers. Maybe grade them on time instead of waiting until the end of the course to grade everything at once. The college informed me they were withholding my financial aid until I went to the IRS office and resubmitted all my info from the FASFA to HACC so they could "confirm" the information I sent to FASFA and make sure FASFA didn't make any errors. I said well I think FASFA has access to confirm anything they need to and you have no right to withhold money they approved for me. They refused to work with me at all. That was the last straw for me and I dropped out for the next semester. Even dropping out was a pain. I needed a code to drop out, but no one would give me the code despite repeated emails asking for it. All they responded was, you need the code, I would say yes I know that what is the code, and they wouldn't respond. I finally called, only to be told "you need to come in." I said no, I don't, I just need this stupid code, and finally was connected with a very helpful advisor who gave me the information I needed. I have spoken to other students who attended different community colleges and none of them had to do any of the things HACC requires and they all stated they had a completely different experience at their colleges. Really disappointed because I wanted this college to work out so badly but this experience has been so terrible I have no desire to even try to find another college to attend. It has been stressful and angering from the very beginning and I would not recommend...

PARKING for FARM COMPLEX HORRIBLE! Drove 1 hour and 20 minutes first visit EVER this year REQUIRED handicap parking and underwent cancer surgery for the fourth time 2024 this week! Was made to wait in the frigid cold for shuttle over 24 minutes until just couldn’t wait any longer. In tears due to excruciating pain, my husband asked if I would rather just leave; and that we did! Road traffic person left post for break without any backup relievers, FIVE BUS DRIVERS at the end with buses out of commission while they took breaks! Really? This is absolutely unacceptable! Any event venue or professional event organizers and organizations growing this fast with tens of thousands being bused in would undoubtedly have folks ready to relieve for breaks with literally portable heated buildings for these workers to be able to take their needed breaks BUT NEVER take working buses out of commission!! Be strategic! Be smart! Be prepared for the last day increase in visitor’s expectations in growth year over year parking especially! Have back up drivers ready to relieve those drivers for breaks especially with tens on tens of thousands of visitors. Hire strategy planners, those who will an analyze necessities, from visitors to road traffic management to state patrol needs and their break to portable headed units, and even heated units for those visitors on worse care scenarios should weather get so low it’s needed like today. Me leaving in tears due to excruciating pain is the last thing you would have wanted much less me considering it would have been my first visit ever. Rethink your parking, have a strategy for every risk, mitigate all risk involved for those disabled individuals like myself. A true waste of $15 for the parking fee to not even get to enjoy what I have seen and heard is one of the best annual shows in Pennsylvania. Super sad as I sit here riding back home still as tears...

This school is a joke. I've had teachers who spend the entire class period talking about celebrities, tried to talk to financial aid on campus only to find a sign on a piece of paper saying they're only available on zoom, and have called and waited 20 minutes for them to answer the phone.

They don't update their website with registration dates, and when you point this out to them they tell you to find a different page that they do update.

I found out less than a month before classes started that they charged me $850 for an intro to business software class that was required for my degree, that I took two semesters before. I was not notified of this balance for 6 months until they sent it to collections. No letters, no notices on my account, no emails, nothing. This was a class that taught the difference between a laptop and desktop computer, what a windows operating system is, and how to save a file in word, type text (literally just type) into a word document, print, and do any other basic stuff in Microsoft products. $850 for this class. I wouldn't pay $50 for someone to teach me such common knowledge stuff. And again, this class is required.

In addition to this, HACC will refuse to give you YOUR transcript, which is YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION which BELONGS to you, if you owe them money. Withholding transcripts in an effort to collect debt is an unethical practice that is already banned in several US states, but not in PA. Without your transcript you can't apply to other schools, or some jobs.

I guarantee you there are better options than this school. In Lancaster alone, Millersville costs about the same and...