Arizona State billed 4,500 students for scholarships after computer glitch

Rachel Leingang | The Republic | azcentral.com

Show Caption Hide Caption 5 myths about Arizona universities debunked, confirmed Some of the lore about ASU, UA and NAU is true, or at least contains a kernel of truth. Others are falsehoods, which may have started as pranks.

About 4,500 Arizona State University students received unexpected, erroneous charges on their university billing accounts last week.

Students who received merit-based scholarships in the 2017-18 school year were accidentally billed for part or all of the scholarships.

ASU fixed the error within 24 hours, and no students paid the faulty charges, the university said.

ASU’s computer system glitched, causing documentation of students’ merit-based scholarships to be removed, the university said. That, in turn, caused the accounts to show a balance due.

To fix the problem, the university reposted the scholarships to the accounts, which removed the costs.

Tatum Harvey, an ASU junior majoring in speech and hearing sciences, saw the charges show up on her account June 21. Two charges of $600 for tuition for the fall 2017 and spring 2018 semesters arrived.

“It honestly scared the crap out of me at first,” Harvey said.

She worried that her merit-based New American University scholarship may have been partly taken away somehow after the fact. But she thought that didn’t make sense. The school couldn’t take away money they had already awarded her, she thought.

She called the financial aid office, which said the charges were errant and would be deleted from her account. It took three hours to get the matter resolved, she said.

On June 22, another student posted about the unexpected charges on social media platform Reddit, on a page dedicated to ASU.

The student's account, a screenshot of which was posted on Reddit, showed $1,600 in charges from the previous two semesters.

Harvey saw the Reddit post the day after her issue was resolved. She was upset to see another student affected; the financial aid office had told her no other students had the same error.

It’s possible the person she talked to didn’t know of the larger issue, she said.

The school received questions about the charges from five students, ASU said. The university did not notify students that they could see mistaken charges on their accounts because it said the issue would be resolved before the school would be able to identify which students were affected and notify them.

To ASU’s knowledge, a glitch like this hasn’t happened before. The computer system has backstop features to spot potential errors, and the system worked as intended when it flagged the glitch, the university said.

“We regret any inconvenience or concern these inadvertent charges caused,” ASU said.

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