If you or your student face a school dismissal proceeding, then one of the immediate questions you also face is what to do about tuition payments. Can you just stop paying tuition until the dismissal proceeding is resolved? Can you even get tuition back that you have already paid and are now at risk because of the dismissal proceeding? If you face tuition questions or similar issues relating to a school dismissal proceeding, retain the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team for your best outcome. Our attorneys will advise you on what to do about tuition and advocate for you with school tuition officials. We can also provide you or your student with skilled and experienced student discipline defense. Call 888.535.3686 now or use our contact form to tell us about your case.
Common Causes for School Dismissal Proceedings
To understand your tuition options, first, be sure you understand the nature of the disciplinary issue that led to the dismissal proceeding. The disciplinary charges you or your student face may influence what you decide, or what the school offers, as to your tuition payment, reimbursement, or other issue. Schools generally provide in their student conduct codes and related policies for the following different kinds of disciplinary charges, any one of which could lead to dismissal.
Academic Misconduct and Tuition Payments
Academic misconduct typically involves various forms of academic dishonesty or cheating. Those forms may include use of unauthorized materials in an exam or for an assignment, submitting others' work as one's own, using an unauthorized online service for assignment or exam assistance, plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration on assignments, and various forms of research fraud such as fabricating or altering data. Professors may have the authority to resolve certain forms of academic misconduct through their own sanctions, such as repeating work, doing extra work, or imposing a reduced or failing grade. In other schools and cases, an academic board or honor panel may decide academic misconduct charges, imposing penalties up to school suspension or dismissal.
If you or your student face charges of serious academic misconduct, your school's academic policies and honor code very likely authorize sanctions up to dismissal. You are right to be concerned about losing tuition payments and may wish to stop making tuition payments until you are able to discern the probable outcome. If you or your student have not begun the semester or term for which you have made a tuition payment, you may want to seek a prompt reimbursement of that payment if the school's policies permit it, depending on the likelihood that you or your student will suffer dismissal. Our attorneys can help you make that judgment while also pursuing avenues for early voluntary dismissal of the academic misconduct charges.
Failure to Academically Progress and Tuition Payments
The failure to make satisfactory academic progress (SAP) is a second ground on which schools often threaten or impose dismissal. Federal student loan regulations require schools receiving federal funding to maintain SAP policies and to require students to meet those policies if they are to continue receiving loans. Those SAP policies are often the source of requirements you may see for a minimum cumulative grade-point average, a minimum percentage of courses completed rather than failed, incomplete, or withdrawn, and a maximum duration of studies toward the degree. For instance, you or your student may face the school's notice of failing to maintain a 2.00 / 4.00 GPA or having failed, withdrawn, or left incomplete more than one-third of credits attempted.
You or your student should definitely take SAP warnings, probation, and dismissal proceedings seriously. You may want to stop making tuition payments and promptly seek reimbursement of payments made for terms just begun if you believe that you or your student have no prospect of regaining good academic standing in the school. However, SAP policies typically permit an appeal and reinstatement when the student can show extenuating or mitigating circumstances causing the academic failures. Our attorneys can help you with an SAP appeal, which requires showing the cause, that you have corrected the cause, and that you have an achievable plan to meet minimum SAP requirements. Let us help you evaluate SAP options, including either tuition reimbursement or SAP appeal.
Behavioral Misconduct and Tuition Payments
Behavioral misconduct is another ground on which schools often pursue disciplinary charges against students with the potential for a dismissal sanction. Behavioral misconduct can include a wide range of endangering, disruptive, immoral, or even criminal behaviors. Schools often adopt student codes of conduct prohibiting the possession of alcohol, drugs, drug paraphernalia, tobacco, including vaping products, weapons, explosive devices including fireworks, pornography, and gambling materials or devices. Student conduct codes typically also include property wrongs among their behavioral misconduct standards, prohibiting theft, vandalism, trespassing, misuse of computers, and the like. Disrupting classes, blocking access to buildings, interfering with fire alarms or fire-safety equipment, and blocking streets or sidewalks are other common behavioral charges.
As with academic misconduct and academic progression issues, you or your student should take behavioral misconduct charges seriously when considering how to handle tuition payments. Depending on the nature and severity of the behavioral wrong, the school could impose dismissal, which the school's student code of conduct very likely authorizes within the discretion of school officials. That is not at all to say that behavioral misconduct charges mean dismissal. Our attorneys have successfully defended hundreds of students nationwide against such charges. With our help, you or your student may be able to defend and defeat behavioral misconduct charges. But if the charges are serious and the incriminating evidence substantial, you may prefer to stop tuition payments and seek prompt tuition reimbursement before the term begins or early in the term if school policies permit it. Our attorneys can help you make the best judgment and, if appropriate, pursue the tuition relief.
Title IX or Other Sexual Misconduct and Tuition Payments
Student conduct codes also typically prohibit student violence, including assault, fighting, and threats; sexual violence, including sexual assault or rape; sexual harassment, including hostile sexual environments; dating violence; stalking; invasions of privacy, voyeurism, sexual blackmail; indecent exposure, and similar sexual wrongs. The federal law Title IX requires schools receiving federal funding to prohibit several of those sexual misconduct forms. Schools generally take sexual misconduct allegations quite seriously, often more seriously than the above academic and behavioral wrongs. Title IX and other sexual misconduct policies routinely authorize not only dismissal proceedings but also emergency no-contact orders that, in many cases, prevent the accused student from coming onto campus or participating in classes.
While federal, public, and institutional pressures increase the dismissal risk related to sexual misconduct charges, the sexual misconduct charges you or your student face may be defensible. Schools must offer relatively elaborate protective procedures for the accused student. Our attorneys know how to effectively invoke and deploy those procedures for the best possible outcome. You should take sexual misconduct charges very seriously. But you or your student may well have a defense. We can help you evaluate whether to seek a prompt tuition refund, promptly stop other tuition payments, or continue on with payments and schooling, trusting the defense process.
School Dismissal Codes and Tuition Payments
Schools of all kinds, both public and private, and undergraduate, graduate, or professional, generally publish student codes of conduct. Those codes vary relatively widely from school to school. Some schools, like the University of Virginia, make broad prohibitions of things like dishonesty, disruption, or immoral or criminal behavior without detailing specific forms of misconduct. Other schools, like the University of Tennessee, make long lists of specific misbehaviors for which they may dismiss students. In either case, though, schools routinely reserve the right to impose sanctions right up to and including dismissal. The default sanction many disciplinary officials use is some duration of a school suspension, such as a single term. But depending on the seriousness of the charge, the strength of the evidence supporting the charge, and the student's response to the charge, dismissal is certainly a prospect for any relatively serious charge. The student codes of conduct will generally not say anything about tuition during a dismissal proceeding. The above two codes, for example, do not. One, instead, must generally look to tuition policies, not conduct policies.
School Dismissal Procedures and Tuition Payments
School student codes of conduct routinely include school dismissal procedures. They must generally do so to comply with your federal constitutional rights to due process. Just because a school charges you or your student with misconduct does not mean that the school has found misconduct or that it will dismiss you or your student. A disciplinary charge is an allegation, not a finding. The school official issuing the charge may have made a preliminary review of the allegation to ascertain whether it could be credible. But the school may not yet have completed its investigation and may not yet have heard anything from you or your defense counsel. School dismissal procedures, like those offered at the University of Wisconsin and Ohio State University, ensure that you get fair notice of the charges and an opportunity for a fair hearing before an impartial decision maker. You should get to tell your side of the story with our skilled and experienced representation.
School dismissal procedures will generally not say anything about tuition payments. But dismissal procedures can be very important to your decision whether to stop making tuition payments and seek reimbursement of payments already made. When you retain us, we can use those dismissal procedures to help you promptly obtain and evaluate the school's evidence, gather your own exonerating and mitigating evidence, and work with school officials for an early voluntary resolution of the charges or a later contested hearing on the charges. Stopping tuition payments and seeking their reimbursement isn't your only option. We can help you decide whether doing so is your best option. But your better option may be for us to invoke procedures and pursue an appropriate defense of the charges.
Recovering Tuition Payments for Completed Terms
Tuition payments for prior completed terms are generally a sunk cost. It is unlikely that once you pay tuition and you or your student complete the term for which you paid, you will recover those payments. Generally, once the school provides the educational services for which you paid tuition, it has fulfilled the tuition agreement. You generally pay tuition term by term, just as the school generally provides educational services term by term. If, for instance, you or your student withdrew from school voluntarily after completing one, two, or several terms, you wouldn't generally expect the school to reimburse you for any of those completed terms. And the same would be true if you or your student withdrew in the face of dismissal proceedings. Recovering tuition for prior completed terms would be unlikely. Recovery of tuition payments generally applies only to terms yet to commence, about to commence, or recently commenced before their completion.
Defending Disciplinary Charges to Save Tuition Payments
Because tuition payments for prior completed terms are generally a non-recoverable sunk cost, defending dismissal charges is often your better approach to saving your tuition investment. If, for instance, you have paid a year, two years, or more years of tuition for yourself or your student to complete a portion, half, or more of the credits necessary for a degree, then your only way to recover that investment is generally to complete the degree. In the face of dismissal proceedings, defending those dismissal proceedings is generally your only way of continuing to pursue and then completing the degree. In short, don't underestimate the value of defending the dismissal charges. Yes, you may save a term of tuition by stopping payment or promptly requesting reimbursement as soon as you learn of dismissal proceedings. But stopping the pursuit of the degree may well cause you to lose everything you've already invested in tuition, room, board, and related expenses.
Transfer May Not Be an Option in Dismissal Proceedings
Some students and their tuition-paying parents may hold the mistaken belief that they can simply stop tuition payments, recover tuition payments for a term not yet begun or only recently begun, and transfer to another school where the student faces no dismissal proceeding. Transfer is often not an option for a student facing a dismissal proceeding. The other school will generally require a letter of good standing, which the school holding the dismissal proceeding generally will not issue until the proceeding concludes. If you or your student wish to transfer, let our attorneys help you address the dismissal proceeding with the current school. We may be able to negotiate a dismissal of the charges in favor of the transfer, depending on the nature of the charges.
Reimbursement of Tuition During Dismissal Proceedings
If the term or semester for which you have made a tuition payment has not yet begun, then the school likely has a policy permitting a tuition refund for withdrawal from the term or semester. Once the term or semester begins, the school's policy may either prohibit tuition refunds, permit tuition refunds for a week, two weeks, or some other limited part of the semester or term, or proportion tuition refunds to a percentage, sometimes reduced week by week. The University of Florida's tuition refund policy is an example. It permits full refunds before the university's drop/add deadline for courses, before the beginning of the term. But it permits only a twenty-five percent refund once the term begins and until the fourth week, after which it permits no refund, except for certain circumstances like the student's serious illness or military call-up.
Tuition refund policies like these require that you make a timely and sensitive judgment on whether to seek a refund during dismissal proceedings. If the dismissal proceedings commence before the beginning of a semester or term for which you have already paid tuition, then you may have a chance to invoke the school's tuition refund policy for a full refund. If the dismissal proceedings commence shortly after the beginning of a semester or term for which you have paid tuition, you may likewise be able to obtain a full or, more likely, partial refund under the school's tuition refund policy. Avoid, though, making a rushed judgment, which may end up being a poor judgment. A hasty decision to obtain a tuition refund may cost you or your student a semester or term off when you might instead have readily defended the charges. Get our help evaluating the charges before deciding on your tuition options while keeping in mind tuition refund deadlines.
Tuition Refunds Outside of Tuition Policies
Just because colleges and universities maintain published tuition policies does not mean that the published policy is your only relief. Schools generally enforce their tuition policies consistently, even uniformly. Do not expect to gain relief that the school would not provide to other students or parents. On the other hand, policies do not always account for every anomalous situation. Your situation, or your student's situation, may not be one that the school officials making tuition decisions believe their tuition policy covers. With our attorneys' help and advocacy, you may gain a tuition refund, which the policy does not appear to expressly provide. Do not, in other words, give up without consulting us on your tuition refund issue relating to dismissal proceedings. We may even be able to negotiate a tuition refund or partial refund in a resolution of the dismissal proceeding, for instance, if you or your student determine to withdraw rather than contest the charge, or if the school agrees to voluntarily dismiss the charge for you or your student to continue, after a semester or term off, for which you've already paid tuition.
Stopping Tuition Payments During Dismissal Proceedings
Stopping future tuition payments that have not yet been made may be another option when you receive notice of a dismissal proceeding. The decision here likely very much depends on what you or your student determine to be the best course during the dismissal proceeding. Is it better to continue with the education while fighting the charges, or is it better to step back for a semester or term while fighting the charges? That decision may depend on the confidence you or your student have in defeating the charges as well as your judgment about whether you or your student can complete studies to the expected standard while fighting the charges.
When you retain us to fight the charges, we may be able to relieve you or your student of much of the burden of the defense. Our attorneys can help you estimate how much time and attention the dismissal proceeding will require. You can then make an informed decision whether to take a semester or term off during the dismissal proceeding, thus stopping tuition payments for that semester or term. You might, in that way, reduce your tuition risks while the dismissal proceeding concludes, although the semester or term off will delay the completion of the education.
Tuition Payments and Whether to Contest Dismissal Charges
You may also be considering whether it is best not to contest the charges at all so that you can just walk away from any continued or future tuition obligations. Beware of that approach. It may cost you or your student more than you think. Stopping tuition payments, withdrawing from school, and ignoring and, in effect, running from the charges may well result in the school defaulting on you or your student on the charges. The school may, in your absence, find misconduct and enter a school dismissal on the transcript. That record may prevent you or your student from gaining admission to another school or may affect job and career prospects, including licenses and certifications. If the school instead leaves the charges pending and unresolved, you or your student may not be able to reenter the school or gain admission to another school without seeing the charges through to resolution. Generally, students find it far better to fight than to run. Stop tuition payments and sit out a semester or term if you think it wise. But let us help you defend and defeat the charges.
How Our Attorneys Can Help with Tuition Issues
As many times indicated above, our attorneys can help you or your student defend the dismissal proceeding. But our attorneys may also be able to help you address tuition issues. When we appear on your behalf in defense of the dismissal proceeding, we may be able to communicate and negotiate with disciplinary officials for relief from tuition policies. The fact of the dismissal proceeding may give school officials authority under published tuition policies or unpublished internal disciplinary practices to suspend tuition obligations or even refund tuition while the dismissal proceeding continues until its conclusion. Our attorneys may be able to invoke and advocate for that authority. We don't just help defend disciplinary proceedings. Our attorneys also help clients deal with related and even collateral consequences. Tuition is one of those important questions our attorneys may be able to help you address when you retain us for disciplinary defense.
Alternative Special Relief
If your school's tuition and disciplinary policies do not appear to provide for tuition reimbursement or stop tuition payments, or school disciplinary officials are not recognizing and acting on their authority to do so, then we may be able to gain you alternative special relief. Our attorneys have the national network and reputation to reach and work effectively with many school general counsel offices and outside retained counsel. Colleges and universities use those oversight officials to help the school limit its regulatory risk, civil liability, and public-relations risks, among other broad interests. We may be able to show your school's general counsel that you should have tuition reimbursement or other relief from or within the dismissal proceeding. We have helped many students across the country in that manner.
A Sensible Approach to Tuition in Dismissal Proceedings
The above information should help you make your best judgment as to how to proceed with tuition payments and tuition reimbursement requests when you or your student face dismissal proceedings. Don't guess, conjecture, or speculate, though. Let our skilled and experienced attorneys help you make an informed judgment about your best approach to tuition during dismissal proceedings. Here is a sensible step-by-step approach we can help you follow to make your best tuition decisions:
- understand the disciplinary charges, including the student conduct code provision the school alleges as a violation;
- obtain and review the evidence of wrongdoing that the school actually possesses, not just the allegations the school makes;
- evaluate the likelihood of school dismissal versus a successful defense of the charges;
- consider the value of the certificate, diploma, degree, license, or other educational or vocational credential if the charges fail;
- consider the tuition investment you've already made toward completing the educational credential;
- determine on the above factors whether to stop paying tuition and suspend pursuit of the education until resolving pending disciplinary charges, or instead to continue paying tuition and pursuing the education while fighting the charges;
- determine the school's tuition policy, permitting or prohibiting a partial or complete tuition refund before the semester or term, early in the semester or term, or as the semester or term progresses so that you act timely once you make your best decision.
The Tuition Contract and Dismissal Proceedings
As briefly suggested above, a student's obligation to pay tuition in exchange for educational services is a contract. Often, the parties to a contract reduce their agreement to a single, signed writing. However, that is not generally the case in a college or university tuition contract. Instead, college or university policies and handbooks, state or federal laws, and other policies, rules, and regulations may all define and affect tuition agreements. You may not find an answer to your tuition reimbursement question in a single place, in a single document the school identifies as your tuition agreement. Our attorneys can help you research, discover, interpret, and advocate the terms of the tuition contract among the above sources.
Who Decides Tuition and Disciplinary Issues
As also briefly indicated above, the school disciplinary officials who initiated the dismissal proceeding against you or your student are likely not the school officials with the authority to impose, waive, adjust, or reimburse tuition. Your school may place or distribute that authority among its registrar, bursar, financial aid officials, or other administrators. But dismissal proceedings may give other school officials, including, for instance, student deans, academic affairs deans, and Title IX coordinators, the authority or opportunity to advocate for tuition adjustments or relief with those other traditional registrars, bursars, and financial aid officials who typically handle tuition issues. We can help you identify with whom you should be communicating, advocating, and negotiating for tuition reimbursement or other tuition relief while dismissal proceedings continue.
Premier Student Defense Available Nationwide
We recognize what you or your student have at stake in a dismissal proceeding. As you've seen above, you or your student likely have significantly more at stake in that dismissal proceeding than just the tuition you have paid or are about to pay. Tuition payments can be large, hard to make, and thus important to you. We recognize that. But we can also advise and represent you on the related dismissal proceeding and other corollary issues that may be just as important or more important to you.
The Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team helps students and their parents across the country with the widest range of student disciplinary issues, including tuition reimbursement and payments. We have helped hundreds of students gain appropriate relief, including early voluntary dismissal of disciplinary charges, favorable decisions at contested hearings, and appeal reversals of discipline already imposed, along with various other forms of relief, including addressing tuition issues. Call 888.535.3686 now or use our contact form to tell us about your case.
