Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Argosy University owes more than $700,000 in student-stipends for its Hawai’i campus, according to financial data included in a US Department of Education, Feb. 27 letter, which is also the same date that federal financial aid was terminated for Argosy.

The American Samoa branch of Argosy is overseen by the Hawai’i campus and the financial data doesn’t break down an amount owed in stipends between Hawai’i and local students, many of whom are ASG employees seeking higher degrees.

(See Samoa News edition last Friday on details of the letter terminating Argosy from student financial aid.)

According to the financial data, a total of $763,523 is owed by Argosy Hawaii on student-stipends, with the majority of that amount — about $645,000 — 14-days overdue. Of interest in the data, is that nearly $3.7 million is owed in student-stipends for Argosy University-Online, the largest unpaid amount.

Samoa News hasn’t been able to verify so far, whether there are any local students taking only online courses through Argosy.

The Feb. 27 letter from USDOE to Argosy’s federal court-appointed Receiver, does show among other things, that one of Argosy’s locations in Phoenix, Arizona has “ceased to provide instruction” to its students because the school is locked out of its premises. These students are holding classes at a nearby college, which was not authorized by USDOE in order to receive federal student aid.

The letter also states that a federal court-appointed Receiver terminated employment of Argosy’s chancellor on Feb. 7 as well as nearly 100 faculty, academic support personnel and financial aid counselors.

USDOE “has been advised that this process was so disruptive that professors were called out of classrooms while they were teaching and their employment terminated,” the letter states. “These actions have resulted in substantial and irreparable damage to the academic integrity of Argosy.”

“Moreover, students who are close to graduation are at risk for not being able to be licensed to practice in psychology if Argosy’s programs no longer meet programatic accreditation requirements due to faculty terminations,” according to the letter.

FEDERAL COURT AND ARGOSY

With mounting student concerns over the non payment of their stipends, the federal court in Cleveland, Ohio has set a hearing Mar. 8 to find out the status of stipend payments for students attending Argosy University, and other institutions owned by California-based Dream Center Education Holdings (DCEH) LLC, which is  facing financial woes.

The hearing followed a request filed two weeks ago by student-intervenors in the DCEH complaint with the federal court, which placed DECH under Receivership on Jan. 18 this year.

The student-intervenors are identified in the court document as the “Dunagan Plaintiffs” who are four students representing an uncertified-class of former Illinois Institute of Art students with pending claims against several DECH entities, which includes current or former Institute of Arts campuses across the US.

The student-intervenors sought an emergency status conference hearing “in response to alarming reports that students at Argosy University were not receiving approved student-loan stipends” through financial aid from USDOE, according to court filings.

On Feb. 19, the court-appointed Receiver filed a status report on the payment status of student stipends attending Argosy. The report states in part that “the money to pay the Student Stipends is not missing” — but, that “plainly is not true from the perspective of students who have not received their stipends,” the student-intervenors argued in court filings.

(Samoa News has received at least three “concerns” in the past four weeks, from students of Samoan ancestry attending Argosy in the US  that they haven’t receive their stipends since the start of this current semester and are trying to get information from the school. Samoa News has shared with these students the Receiver's contact information — which is public record in court filings.)

In court filings, student-intervenors cited a Feb. 19 story by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper, which quotes a USDOE spokesperson saying that the USDOE “is deeply concerned that the Receiver and the [Argosy] institution are currently unable to fully account for the funds disbursed by the department to pay student account balances” — referring to the stipends.

The student-intervenors also cited a story by Florida’s WFLA-TV, which quotes four US Congressional members calling for a federal investigation to find out what happened to the millions of dollars in missing federal aid money for students attending Argosy across the country.

“Certainly the court and the public has a right to know” what happened to the student-stipends, the student-intervenors point out.

In an order issued last Thursday, US Magistrate Judge Thomas M. Parker, directed court-appointed Receiver, Mark E. Dottore, to file by Mar. 7 specific reports regarding Argosy and other DECH schools and scheduled a status conference hearing the following day Mar. 8. The judge also directed the Receiver to invite a USDOE representative with knowledge of how student stipends might be paid, to participate in the hearing either in person or by phone.

See Samoa News editions on Feb. 20 and Feb. 26 regarding Dottore status reports to the court on student stipend payments for Argosy.