Complaint Review: Heald College

I attended Heald College after having my son thinking it was going to be the best. Well Heald College turned out to be my worse nightmare. I went to speak to a counselor before attending as part of every process and he told me that they had the best Criminal Justice program. He told me I would be majoring in Criminal Justice and nothing else. Well at the end of my second quarter a few of the students were discussing our majors etc. One of the teachers over heard our conversation and clarified that our major wasn't criminal justice, but rather Business Admin with an Emphasis in Criminal Justice. The reason neither of us became suspicious of that was because we were taking general Ed at the beginning of that quarter. A lot of us were shocked to find out that our Major wasn't Criminal Justice so we went and spoke to the counselor about it only to hear a bunch of excuses. Of course they convinced us to stay because at that point we had already wasted close to six months in that school plus we owed over $8,000. I finally stayed and graduated back in October of 06 only to find out that non of my credits were transferable. They have this new program in which they claim that if you finish you can get your AA and transfer as a Junior to any university or I should say almost any. I tried finishing the program, but after all their lies I didn't want to take another chance so I left in January 07. Signed all my paper work in financial aid in where they clearly ripped me off and couldn't do anything about it. I took it as a loss and thought it would end there. Well when i left the school I left with 0 balance. They harassed me over coming back to finish the program and when I said NO they decide to bill me for $1500 (BALANCE THAT I DID NOT HAVE WHEN I LEFT) I called back and they said it was a mistake. Here I am now Feb 1st 08 and just got another call after I denied going back for the last time and now I have a new balance of $1310. I am now stuck with a loan over 28k for attending Heald. I am paying too much money for a college who's credits aren't even transferable. I am very frustrated because this has happened to a lot of people I know and we can't do anything about it. A lot of them went back so their balance disappeared. This lady I spoke to today had the nerves to ask me to come back in order for that balance to go away. Of course she didn't say it directly, but she did. I would go back to finish my program and get rid of that balance, but I'm scared they might do something worse after I finish the program. I feel Heald should be investigated since a lot of their students feel they have been ripped off and lied to about everything including their Major and credits.

Clau21
san bruno, California
U.S.A.