Have you been screwed by your school administration?

Oh man, this is pretty recent. So after studying 1 year of a 2 year diploma, I get a full time job at a reputable company, and I basically end up working full time for ~3 years. During this time I asked the program head how much time from the start of my program I had to complete it (assuming I didn't want my first year tuition to go to waste, and would return).

They said 7 years. About a year later, I check with them again (just in case), and the program head has been replaced, and the new guy says 5 years. Fast forward a bit, I left the company and just started another job for 3 months, yet another new program head (that replaced the previous one) emails me out of the blue and says I've passed the 3 years allowed to complete the 2 year diploma program.

After explaining all this to him, he basically says he'll allow me to return only if I return immediately and complete my final year without hiccups, and to sign a "performance contract". I ended up having to quit my job due to pressure from family on finishing my studies, and a bit of a sunk costs mentality.

Thank God I'm done with that now.

In college I tried to get a classmate's laptop online by adding their mac address to my account, since they couldn't get into theirs. Short story is that they thought I was trying to lock him out of the network so they opened up a disciplinary case against me.

Months later I had a hold on my account (couldn't access grades) with a note to go to a particular office.

When I arrived at that office I assumed someone was going to help me fix the problem or tell me I owed some more money. They checked out my account and went right into asking me very innocent sounding questions without giving me any info. Eventually it got pretty leading and I realized that something was going on and I asked outright - it was not until this point that they even told me what the questions were about (!!)

After leaving I got an attorney and put together whatever evidence I could for an upcoming hearing with a disciplinary board.

There were three mac addresses on my account so I went to work getting a signed affidavit from the person I sold my old laptop to so I could clear that off the list.

In the end I pled my case to a board of like 8 or 9 people with no advocate or "judge" type, no rules as to what needed to happen or be proved - I didn't even have an accuser, really, just a sysadmin that saw something he found peculiar.

I spoke for maybe 15 minutes, they took another 5 or 10 to talk and dropped the charge, but not without chastising me anyway. All-in-all it was completely insane.

I can't imagine any serious cases with regard to violence or expulsion-grade offenses like cheating going down like this - it's horrible. There's no accountability and it's like a side gig for everyone involved except the accused whose future may be on the line.

Yes, when I was a Accountancy student, I had a lot of classes that I could skip because of my degree, but they charged me for the classes I skipped.