When the Roc Nation School launched at Long Island University’s Downtown Brooklyn campus in 2021, as many as 50 students from its inaugural class were awarded what they believed were “debt-free” scholarships by JAY-Z‘s behemoth entertainment company. Meaning: no loans or grants would be required for the completion of their degree.
However, at least a dozen students are now claiming they were billed by the school for thousands of dollars, forcing them to either borrow from the bank or leave their programs altogether. According to a report from Gothamist, recipients of the “Hope” scholarship not only accrued debt for room and board and associated living costs but found their programs to be wildly over-promising and under-delivering basic resources for students. “It kind of has been a scam,” one student admitted.
Another “Hope” scholar, who was attending the Roc Nation School of Music, spent their first semester piecing together equipment to build the school’s recording studio in an abandoned student radio station when they learned there was no such facility available to them. They left the program $39,000 of student loan debt. And another student, who was informed of being awarded the debt-free scholarship by school dean Tressa Cunningham via text is getting ready to graduate with $5,000 of debt after negotiating down from $26,000. The Roc Nation School of Music also enticed prospective students with guest lectures from marquee names like Rihanna, DJ Khaled, The Jonas Brothers, and others. But students report none of those stars showed up. They did, however, receive visits from Meghan Thee Stallion, Fat Joe, and Rapsody, as well as athletes like former NFL receiver Victor Cruz and NBA shooting guard Danny Green.
Representatives from the school have been cagey about responding to concerns from students and the publication, which pressed Roc Nation about the language in their agreements with these students. Gothamist reports having reviewed the acceptance letters of the dozen scholarship recipients speaking out against the company/school and finding nothing that indicates what the scholarship doesn’t cover. Many recipients received their acceptance via email. “Because you are a Hope scholar your tuition is fully covered. This means you do not need to make a tuition deposit. We can enroll you in classes right away!!” the letter reads.
Gothamist reached out to Jackie Nealon, an LIU marketing chief, who claimed “The offer letter also expressly includes that neither university fees nor housing costs are included in the scholarship,” but failed to provide a copy of the scholarship offers with that wording. It’s unclear how the institution intends to reconcile the debts accumulated by their “debt-free” scholars. It has, at least, updated the description on the scholarship’s website to read “tuition-free education” instead.
The post Students at JAY-Z’s Roc Nation School Claim “Debt-Free” Scholarship is a “Scam” appeared first on BKMAG.
