Financial Aid Slow To Arrive For Some UC Berkeley Students
BERKELEY (KPIX 5) -- Some UC Berkeley students are struggling to pay for school after not receiving their financial aid checks on time.
Many students have been waiting for months.
A University of California education doesn't come cheaply. And for student Diana Gonzales, the financial aid to pay for it didn't come through when she needed it.
Gonzales said, "I still haven't received any money for my books any money for any of my expenses, including housing, so at this point I'm being evicted. I'm a mother of three little ones. As a student here and a non-traditional student especially, I feel that this is just a lot of stress on our family unnecessarily."
She is one many students dealing with a delay in getting their funds. Facebook forums are full of them, one student -- Sebastian -- took his case to student council before finally getting his last week.
We've tried to get UC Berkeley on camera to explain the situation since Thursday. Not only were they unavailable, a spokesman told me via email he doesn't even have time to discuss the matter over the phone.
Instead, he emailed that "overall we are working to improve the process for next year and we have been working this semester [to] shave down our response time."
Adam Ratliff, the spokesman, also added many delays may be due to application errors, which Diana and Sebastian both say is not an issue in their case and were both told the problem was internal:
"They continue to say they are understaffed and that they can't deal with the amount of cases they have," Dianna Gonzales said.
Additional verification processes may also be to blame. In the interim, the school spokesman encouraged students in need to file for loans, something both Diana and Sebastian say they've already exhausted.
This is certainly something that requires further digging, hopefully with the help of UC Berkeley.
In the meantime, we are happy to say that we've just learned Diana's funding came through, though there are still many students out there still waiting.
