Courtesy photo
Kayleigh Hernandez enrolled at WashU with hopes of becoming an engineer.
For Washington University undergrad Kayleigh Hernandez, Monday was a day of massive relief, of the stress that had been hanging overhead for months suddenly lifting. But it’s hard not to question why it took so long for WashU to ease her burden.
WashU evicted Hernandez from campus last semester, saying she couldn’t resume her education there until she paid off the $50,000 she owed them for the previous year’s fall semester. But she didn’t have the money.
Hernandez came to WashU through the QuestBridge program, which connects high-achieving, low-income high school students with colleges offering full-ride scholarships. Hernandez, an aspiring engineer from a family where no one had gone to college, fit the bill. “From a young age, I would say, since 10 or 11, I've always been a very ambitious person, and I've wanted more for myself,” she told SLM in December. QuestBridge—and by extension WashU—seemed to offer that possibility.
But Hernandez made two mistakes that would prove costly. First, she assumed, wrongly, that she only had to fill out the FAFSA once, that the financial data she’d provided in high school would carry through all four years. If she’d completed that paperwork, her sophomore year would likely have been covered almost entirely, just like her first.
But she didn’t, and then in the first semester of her sophomore year, she also began to suffer health problems, including seizures. After she was hospitalized in November, she sought a medical leave of absence and moved back to Florida.
She secured the leave in time for her second semester, but not the first. That meant getting hit with a $50,000 bill for the first semester coursework she never even finished.
Hernandez returned to campus this past fall, but her plans to get her college education back on track hit a dead end when WashU informed her in September they were evicting her: She needed to pay off the amount due in order to return to campus.
She spent the next three months fighting to return.
Hernandez contacted all the WashU offices and administrators she could think of. She told her story to Student Life and put up a GoFundMe. She got the sense lower-level WashU staffers wanted to help her—but no one seemed to have the power to forgive her debt or even let her come back on a reasonable payment plan.
She also got support from other students. Natalia León Díaz, a junior and social justice lead for the Association of Latin American Students, raised alarm wherever she could. She even secured a meeting with a vice chancellor before the holiday break. Nothing seemed to work.
“Basically, everything has been a dead end at this point,” Díaz told SLM in December.
Since 2014, when the New York Times reported that WashU was “maybe the starkest example” of the lack of economic diversity gripping elite universities, with just 6 percent of students eligible for Pell grants, the university has sought to rectify the situation. It now touts a 178 percent in first-generation college students enrolling since 2013 and recently reported that 20 percent of its first-year students were Pell-eligible.
Diaz says accepting low-income students isn’t enough. “It's clear that the numbers have increased, and that WashU has increased access to people with scarce resources,” she says. “However, acceptances cannot go without support, because a lot of people just simply don't have the support to navigate an elite institution like WashU. And the risk of that poses is not a minor one. It's a life-changing one.”
Julie Flory, a spokeswoman for WashU, said she could not discuss specifics of Hernandez’s case. “Any student who has concerns about their financial situation, including completing forms or paying fees, should contact Student Financial Services,” she wrote in an email. “The SFS team is there to support students to make sure they understand the process and to answer any questions. At WashU, we’re 100 percent committed to helping all our students succeed throughout their entire WashU experience, regardless of their background.”
On Jan. 5, Hernandez got what felt like it could be a breakthrough: An email from an associate dean in WashU’s engineering school. When she again attempted to explain her situation, and suggest some sort of payment plan, he wrote, “I am truly sympathetic to your situation. I was a first-generation college student. An Army ROTC scholarship helped change the trajectory of my life.” They arranged time to talk the following day.
All night Hernandez wondered. The dean seemed like he had a solution—but what did he mean about the ROTC scholarship? “I was like, ‘Are they going to make me join the Army?’” It was massive relief when, on Jan. 6, he instead explained that the school would be forgiving Hernandez’s debt entirely and she could come back this coming semester.
Hernandez immediately booked a flight to come back to St. Louis this weekend—and start this next semester on time. “When I’m dedicated to something, I’ll do whatever it takes to get it done,” she said.
While her situation is resolved, she’s still thinking about the bigger picture. Going forward, she hopes the university can do a better job of supporting students who don’t know about things like FAFSA and don’t have parents who can help. She says, “I know they can't admit every low-income student under the sky, but for the ones that they do admit, I’d just like to see an increased amount of support.”
