San Ignacio University Student Defense Lawyer

San Ignacio University is a for-profit institution in Doral, in Miami-Dade County, licensed by Florida’s Commission for Independent Education and participating in federal student aid. It offers programs at undergraduate and graduate level and has a substantial international student population. Federal disputes go to the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division.

Work in this order, not the order the school suggests

At a school with a large international enrollment the sequence matters more than the arguments, and the school will not always volunteer it. Deal with immigration status first, the appeal deadline second, the record third, and the money last. Students who reverse that order — arguing the merits for three weeks and then discovering their SEVIS record was terminated on day two — lose something no appeal can recover.

If you are here on an F-1 visa, the clock is much shorter than the appeal calendar

This is the part that gets missed, and missing it is far more damaging than the dismissal. An F-1 student’s lawful status depends on maintaining a full course of study at the school that issued the I-20, under 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(f)(6). When a school dismisses or withdraws you, the designated school official terminates your SEVIS record, and status ends on termination. The sixty-day grace period that follows a normal program completion does not apply to a termination for disciplinary or academic reasons — there is no cushion, and every day afterwards is accrued unlawful presence.

So the sequence matters enormously. A pending internal appeal does not by itself preserve status once the record is terminated, and a school that agrees months later to reinstate you academically has not fixed your immigration problem. What can help is acting before or immediately after termination: asking the designated school official in writing to hold the SEVIS record while the appeal is pending, arranging a timely transfer to another SEVP-certified school, or applying for reinstatement to student status on Form I-539 under 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(f)(16). Those routes have their own eligibility limits and their own deadlines.

I am a student defense lawyer, not an immigration lawyer, and reinstatement work belongs with immigration counsel. The reason it appears on this page is that the two tracks have to be run in parallel from day one, and the school-side deadline is usually the one that decides whether the immigration side still has options. If you are on a visa, say so in your first message.

The appeal deadline, and what to file inside it

Once the immigration position is being handled, the school-side deadline is the next thing that cannot be recovered. Appeal windows at institutions this size are commonly measured in days from the date on the decision letter rather than from the date you received or understood it. You do not need your full argument to preserve it. A short written notice stating that you are appealing, identifying the decision and its date, and requesting the complete record relied on plus the specific policy provision applied, is enough — and the record you get back is what tells you whether you have a case worth developing.

Where a language issue becomes a procedural issue

At institutions serving large numbers of students whose first language is not English, one question recurs and it is a genuinely good one. Was the policy that governed you, and the decision that ended your enrollment, communicated in a form you could actually understand? Florida law asks whether the institution followed its own published procedure, and a school that cannot show the governing policy reached you in usable form is weaker on precisely that question. If a written policy, an assessment or a disciplinary process was delivered only in a language your program was not taught in, ask in writing for the version in the language of instruction and note the date you asked. Raised contemporaneously it is a live point; raised for the first time months later it reads as a reaction to the outcome.

Graduate and professional students are in a different position from undergraduates

Two things change once the program is a master’s, a doctorate or a professional credential. The first is that the decision is usually made by a small number of people who all know each other and know you — a program director, a committee chair, one or two faculty. That concentration cuts both ways. It means the record is short and often informal, which makes an inconsistency easy to find; it also means a personal conflict can drive an outcome that is then written up in academic language, and untangling the two is most of the work.

The second is that the sunk cost is enormous and largely non-transferable. Coursework toward a specific degree, a completed comprehensive exam, an approved prospectus, a half-finished thesis, an internship or practicum placement secured through the program — very little of that moves to another institution. That is why Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, 780 So. 2d 136 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000), matters more at this level than any other Florida authority. Sharick allowed a dismissed student to recover the lost value of the degree itself, not merely the tuition paid, where the dismissal breached the institution’s own contract with him. The remedy is real, and its existence is often the only thing that makes a school negotiate.

What Florida courts will not do is second-guess an academic judgment they consider genuinely academic. The productive line of attack is almost never “the committee was wrong about my work.” It is that the institution did not follow its own published procedure — the notice it promised, the committee composition it specified, the review layer it advertised, the timeline in its own handbook. Those are contract terms, and they are the terms a court will read.

What a Florida court will and will not review

Your relationship with a private licensed school is contractual, not constitutional. Fourteenth Amendment due process constrains state actors, and a private institution is not one, so the argument is built on the enrollment agreement, the catalog and the handbook rather than on due process. Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, 780 So. 2d 136 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000), established both that the relationship is contractual and that damages can reach the lost value of the credential itself, not just tuition paid.

The limit on that is the part students are rarely told. In Tercier v. University of Miami, 383 So. 3d 847 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023) — a nursing dismissal — the Third District confirmed that judicial review of a private institution’s academic determination is confined to whether it was arbitrary and capricious, irrational, made in bad faith, or in violation of the constitution or a statute. Jallali v. Nova Southeastern University, 992 So. 2d 338 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008) says the same thing from the other direction: schools get wide latitude to set and apply academic requirements, and the student’s implied duty is to comply with rules the school may lawfully change.

The practical translation is short. “The faculty graded me unfairly” loses. “The school did not do what its own published policy said it would do” is the claim that survives, and it is why the first thing worth doing is reading the catalog edition that was in force when you enrolled against what actually happened to you. Tercier carries a second lesson too: the court noted that claims not briefed on appeal were treated as abandoned. Arguments have to be raised, and preserved, at each level — including inside the school’s own process.

Which regulator actually holds the leverage here

Two different agencies matter, and students routinely write to the wrong one. Florida’s Commission for Independent Education licenses the institution under chapter 1005, Florida Statutes, and the Commission is where you complain about the school — misrepresentation in recruiting, refusal to release a transcript, a refund the school will not pay, a program that stopped being delivered as advertised. Rule 6E-1.0032, Florida Administrative Code, requires a licensed institution to maintain and follow a published grievance procedure, and the Commission expects to see that you used it before it will act, so the internal appeal is not a formality you can skip on your way to the regulator.

A professional licensing board — Nursing, Massage Therapy, Psychology, Radiologic Technology, Respiratory Care, whichever governs the credential — is a different body with different powers. It regulates the program and the license, not the school’s business conduct, and it will not order a school to readmit you. Sorting out which of the two can give you the thing you actually want is the first useful hour of work in most of these cases, because the wrong filing costs weeks and tells the school you are not being advised.

If the school closes while you are enrolled, section 1005.36 governs the notice it owes and the custody of student records, and section 1005.37 establishes the Student Protection Fund that can reimburse unearned tuition. Those are separate remedies from anything in your student contract and they run on their own deadlines.

A private school, so the statute students rely on does not apply

Most writing about Florida student dismissal assumes a public college, where Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) supplies notice, a hearing, the right to be accompanied by counsel and a burden that rests on the institution. This is a private institution. None of that section reaches it.

What governs instead is the enrollment agreement, the catalog and the student and program handbooks, read as a contract. Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences establishes that a Florida student dismissed in breach of the school’s own contractual undertakings has a claim, and that damages can extend to lost future earning capacity rather than a refund of tuition.

Two further things matter at schools of this kind. Many enrollment agreements contain an arbitration clause, and whether it binds a student depends on the version signed, how broadly it is drafted, whether its cost terms are unconscionable and whether the school has waived it — that comes first, because it decides whether there is a courtroom at all. And where a school is licensed by the Florida Commission for Independent Education, the CIE complaint route exists alongside any civil claim and is often the faster pressure point.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

• Resolve the arbitration question first, from the agreement the student actually signed.
• Assemble the enrollment agreement, catalog and program handbook for the correct edition, and pin down the promises about process.
• Test the progression arithmetic — withdrawals, repeats and clinical failures are often counted in ways the handbook does not authorize.
• Use the Commission for Independent Education complaint route where the school is CIE-licensed, in parallel with the civil claim.
• Press on the wording of the decision letter, which follows the student into every future licensure and transfer application.

Related pages

Florida student defense

Other Florida universities

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other Florida universities:

• Schiller International University
• South University Orlando
• South University Tampa
• South University West Palm Beach
• Southeastern University
• St. Thomas University Student Defense Lawyer (Miami Gardens)

Common questions about San Ignacio University cases

What order should I deal with things in?

Immigration status first, the appeal deadline second, the record third, money last. Students who argue the merits for three weeks and then find their SEVIS record was terminated on day two lose something no appeal can recover.

Does appealing protect my visa status?

Not by itself, once the SEVIS record has been terminated. Ask the designated school official in writing to hold the record while the appeal is pending, look at a timely transfer to another SEVP-certified school, and take advice on reinstatement under 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(f)(16) — in parallel with the appeal, not after it.

What should I file inside the appeal deadline?

A short written notice that you are appealing, identifying the decision and its date, and requesting the complete record relied on plus the specific policy provision applied. That is enough to preserve the deadline, and the record you get back tells you whether there is a case worth developing.

English is not my first language. Does that affect my case?

It can, in a specific and useful way. Florida law asks whether the school followed its own published procedure, and a school that cannot show the governing policy reached you in a form you could understand is weaker on that question. Ask in writing for the policy and decision in the language of instruction, and record the date you asked.

How long do these appeal windows usually run?

Days rather than weeks at institutions of this size, and typically from the date on the letter rather than the date you read it. That is why filing something short immediately matters more than filing something complete later.

Which court covers San Ignacio University?

Miami-Dade County is in the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division. Read your enrollment agreement first, since an arbitration clause may take the dispute out of court entirely.