Can my uni throw me out immediately? Really upset pls help

[incrediblydistraught]

Late paying last installment for my masters degree, having some financial difficulty. I went in and spoke to them and asked if would be ok to finish paying by August followed up with call last week.

They have suspended me now and can't access any of my student accounts. I have called and am really distraught I can't fucking cope I have just spent £8000 and a whole year trying to make myself more employable AND THE WHOLE THING IS A FUCKING WASTE.

Nobody could say if they will let me finish. I don't know what to do I feel so misled as far as I knew it was ok to finsih paying by August and then suspending my email how the fuck can I communicate with anyone at the uni to even try t o resolve it????????

Shaking with fear no matter what I do how hard I try it all gets taken away from me I am a laughing stock. I have paid £8000 all for nothing, my grades are all good and its all for nothing.

they probably have their phone numbers on the website.

Yes they will, but for many academics (at least the ones in my area) the teaching year is over so they will be at conferences/doing fieldwork or archive work/working from home if they can. They may not be around to pick up a phonecall but they will get an email.

OP, your university will want you to complete your degree so they will be happy to sort something out with you.

OP, I have absolutely no advice but I just wanted to say that I know exactly how you're feeling and I really hope you can get this sorted out.

Feeling overwhelmed by things is something that happens to lots of us.

You're not alone by any means. Please come back and tell us how you succeeded. I'm sure you will.

Take things one at a time.

Remember that they want to work with you. If they haven’t formally notified you that you would be suspended or removed from the course it is unlikely that is what is happening.

It is never intrusive to contact academic staff. It really is their job. Don't do it now- email your supervisor and the Head of Department/course leader tonight with an update and ask for their support in helping you complete due to your changed financial circumstances.

All the advice you have received about creating an email trail to Finance, then getting Student Union/Services involved is good.

As someone else has said- unis have a great way of making you pay, you cannot graduate with a certificate til you have settled your debts.

This does not wipe out anything you have done, and I'm pretty sure once a plan is in place or the debt is paid, you can continue and complete your Masters.

Finally- most Masters students are not being taught on courses in the summer but doing their dissertations. You can still work on your dissertation while you are waiting for access to be restored. If you need to access journals, then use a platform like Unpaywall which gives access to millions of free articles. Of course it is better to have the full access again, but it needn't be a disaster if that isn't happening right now.

Good luck sorting it all out.

Definitely it's okay to contact an academic! Seriously, anyone who teaches you wants to help you. Your tutor or course director or just a lecturer you thought was friendly - depending on their position, they may not know what to do immediately, but will be able to talk to people to find out.

And I would totally first go to a glitch or automatic process, as an explanation, rather than actual decision in an actual meeting. I'm an academic and I had my email account and access cards suspended when I got a promotion, because the computers had gotten notice of the end of my old contract but not the start of my new one... it took a over a week to sort out, during which I had no email and had to get colleagues let me into the building. And a week when my email bounced...

This happened to me.
I contacted my student union and they were brilliant. They negotiated with the finance dept and came up with a repayment plan.
They also suggested i apply for a hardship grant which I did.
I wasn't much but it was a help
Get in touch with the union today

they may not be around to pick up a phonecall but they will get an email - if the number is a desk phone there will be an out of office message on it or it will be diverted to a mobile.

A pp who works in a University has already said that OP should not email using her personal email as it is unlikely to be responded to, and she has no access to her University account.

Talk to them. I think you’ll be ok.

Suspended isn’t the same as chucked out.

2 of my 3 children have deferred things, left but kept options open etc.

I went with one to a meeting. He had had enough and was determined to leave. We negotiated a ‘he can come back and complete it if he wants package’ ( he didn’t but the option was there)

Get past the ‘computer says no’ stage and you should find things can be sorted out in a more humane and understanding manner.

Hope it goes ok for you.

Make an appointment immediately with the Head of Sutdent Services - they should be able to guide you thorugh this - are there any hardhsip funds you can access?

I doubt your course leader wants you off the course - they also need to show what happens to peoploe on their courses.

I am sure you can appeal this - start with head of student services whou should help you and guide you through this - if no luck there then you need to see the head of registry, copy in your head of programme and just keep flagging this up until someone respons.

Also, to add, the chap at my finance dept was horrible, and just said, tough, but it was very different when I explained all my circumstances to the student union and they intervened for me

Hospital appointments can be overwhealming anyway and you were maybe nervous about that before going and this on top has pushed you over that edge. I get that.

When this happened to one of my students, and it was only the second time I'd met her as she was a "coper" she came to me a hystercal saying goodbye and how she'd fucked up, lost her career etc. For her it was caused by the uni automated sweep of student records to see who owed any money and was due to either graduate or gateway to the next qualification (taught element meant a diploma and you needed to pass that to do the dissertation and get the masters) to prevent that until payment was made. There was an option to pay later if you had special permission but the system hadn't flagged it and she hadn't thought to get it in writing (she had a huge amount going on she'd not told me about which I could have helped with during the year that's why I said she was a coper). Even if it wasn't possible for her to continue she would still have got the diploma and be allowed to do the dissertation to get the masters at a later date which she wasn't aware of, so knowing she hadn't just wasted a year or her life even in the worst case scenario really helped her.

I do think you sound overwhealmed with everything and definitely have a chat with your tutor, they won't mind, they need to be aware about your health as well as that can make things become overwhelming quite quickly. Don't worry about sounding a mess in emails, there wasn't much my inbox didn't see, including some x rated pics sent to me by accident by one of my students!!

So contact them to let them know and do all you can for now and then do something nice for you. I know it's easy to say put it out of your mind, but I suggest you try (and yes I'm crap at taking my own advice!)

Hope you get it sorted OP

When I was finishing my master's, twice I got kicked off the uni online systems and my access to uni buildings cancelled. Once was purely because the automated systems (that presumably kick in at the end of term dates) assumed I had finished - my course was extended because my work placement fell through and I had to wait for another, but the systems assumed id finished. The second was because of a bursary screw up which meant they thought I owed fees when I didn't. Given the volume of students a lot of these situations are 'computer says no' but as PP have said, unis don't want to lose students so if you discuss in person they should be able to help.

Email your personal tutor now and ask them to call you on x number at x time today if possible, or if you can come and see them tomorrow.

Explain very briefly what's happened and say that you're panicking, can they help at all.

OP suspension is completely different to de-registering.

I agree with everyone on here. This is sortable - it will be okay.

The automated checking of student records sounds good in theory but honestly decades later I still hear of students finding themselves deregistered because "the system says so".

I still wonder what happens to those who accept they cannot continue because I'm sure there are people who get letters or emails these days saying you're suspended and accept it in a blind panic.

OP - it is true that not all academics will be able to answer their phones. We have no answer service facility (apparently they used to have one - but now it's just for admin and not academic staff, because academics didn't get phone calls enough to justify the cost). But if you can't reach an academic on the phone, you can call the department number and speak to a secretary who can send a message for you. Better yet if you actually have a Dept/School Teaching Office or similar - ours are really great about passing on info from students (usually who felt like they couldn't/shouldn't contact the academic directly).

Your tutor won't be able to do anything about this, they do not have any jurisdiction over administrative procedures.

The people that have suspended your account are the fees team. They need to make sure tuition fee payments are up to date for all students..HOWEVER they have several options for students experiencing cash flow problems. One of which would be a personal payment plan. It sounds like you have attempted to set one of these up and it's being looked at.

As someone else has mentioned, it is not in the interests of the university to kick someone out. The worse case scenario is the completion of your masters is delayed until you can pay for it fully. Completely reasonable as I am sure you agree.

Once you have paid in full, you will be fully reinstated and your degree finalised. Think of this as a temporary leave of absence.

The key message is to keep in contact with the fees team, keep them informed, give them something to work with. Send them paperwork, anything that guarantees a future income.

You will be amazed at what self funded students do to try and avoid paying their fees, so there has to be a fairly rigid procedure to help identify the genuine cases .

I won't out myself too much, but believe me I know what I'm talking about!

answer service facility- you mean voicemail? How expensive can that be? Every mobile phone has it. I’m amazed. I believe you, murmuration but I’m amazed.

Sorry too much bold there.

A pp who works in a University has already said that OP should not email using her personal email as it is unlikely to be responded to, and she has no access to her University account.

Not good advice - I work in a university (am an academic, a personal tutor, have been senior tutor for my dept in the past) and we would always answer emails from non-university accounts if the student is unable to access their university email account.

OP, where possible, I would keep everything to email or a meeting where you have someone from the SU with you - you want a clear paper trail or a witness, just in case you have to escalate things at a later date (unlikely).

Grace - I honestly don't know. It was some Uni-wide telecom thing. I do actually have it on my Uni mobile!! Just not the office phone. You can buy (with your own money) an answer phone and plug it in, but you need to fill out a bunch of forms and get special permission to have a 'non-University' phone and they need to activate that jack to take 'normal' phones or something weird. Given my office phone rings maybe 10 times a year (half of which turn out to be wrong numbers - although I've been able to help some who were trying to reach other bits of the Uni!), it didn't seem worth it.

Is your tuition fee £8000? Or is this what you've spent and you still owe them money for the rest of the course? I'm currently doing a masters myself, and my impression is that there is always a way around issues like this, and if they've shut you out of the intranets then that is a result of an automatic process and if you talk to them they should regain you access. Universities really don't want to lose students, and they are often willing to do nearly everything in order to get students to stay, especially masters students.

I honestly think there's been a mistake here and talking to them will resolve it. If, however, it's true what you say and that there is no way back here, then the other option is to apply again for next year. The modules you've already done will stand and you won't have to do these (or pay for them) again.

I really hope it's sorted, usually they would let you finish the course but not let you graduate until fees are paid in full.

Having worked at Unis on the finance side I think there had been a cock yo on their side!!

JangoInTheFamilyWay said she was an academic and then said:

Don't email off a private email, they may not read it (usually against policy to communicate that way)

so on on that basis FatherBuzzCagney surely the only thing we can conclude is that some universities, such as yours, will read/respond and others, such as Jango’s may not. We have no idea which category OP’s institution falls into.

murmuration I’m intrigued that all these people are saying calling an academic is not intrusive yet you say you only got about 10 calls a year? So on that basis it was hardly normal for people to call them? Or do you just mean that everyone used your mobile number?