Millennia Atlantic University Student Defense

Millennia Atlantic 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 associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business fields — business administration, human resources, entrepreneurship and international management — including online master’s options. Federal disputes go to the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division.

No license gate, which changes what a good outcome looks like

Business degrees do not lead to a Florida license that depends on completing a particular program, and saying so plainly is more useful than pretending otherwise. It means a dismissal here does not close a profession to you. What it costs is tuition, time, the credits you completed and — for many students at this institution — immigration status. So the objective is not usually reinstatement at any price. It is to convert what you completed into something another institution will accept, and to protect your status while you do it.

Credit transfer is the asset, and the transcript is how you protect it

The practical value in a part-completed business degree is transferable credit, and transferable credit depends on two things: what your transcript says, and what accreditation the institution holds. Both are worth pinning down in writing before you decide anything. Ask for a complete transcript showing every course, grade and credit earned, and ask which accreditation the institution holds — because the receiving institution’s willingness to accept credit will turn substantially on that, and a student who assumes credits will transfer and finds out otherwise a term later has lost more time than the dismissal itself cost.

Ask also, in writing, whether the school will record your exit as a withdrawal rather than a dismissal. This is a small request that is often granted and that materially affects how the next admissions office reads your file — and unlike a licensure case, here there is no regulator you have to satisfy, so the record is the whole of what follows you.

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.

Where the money questions sit

Two are checkable and both are commonly wrong. If federal aid was involved, ask for the return-of-funds calculation performed when your enrollment ended, and check the dates it used against the date the enrollment actually ended — errors create balances you do not owe, and an institutional balance is usually what puts a hold on the transcript you need. Second, check the published refund policy and the cancellation terms of your enrollment agreement against what you were actually charged. A licensed institution has to follow its own refund policy, and that is a straightforward contract point rather than an argument about academic judgment.

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:

• Nova Southeastern University
• Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico FL
• Rasmussen University Florida
• Saint Leo University
• San Ignacio University
• Schiller International University

Common questions about Millennia Atlantic University cases

Does a dismissal here stop me working in business?

No. Business degrees do not lead to a Florida license conditioned on completing a particular program, so no profession closes to you. The real costs are tuition, time, the credits you completed, and — for many students here — immigration status.

What is the most valuable thing to secure?

A complete transcript showing every course, grade and credit earned, plus written confirmation of which accreditation the institution holds. Transferable credit is the asset in a part-completed business degree, and a receiving institution’s willingness to accept it turns substantially on accreditation.

Can I ask for my exit to be recorded as a withdrawal?

Yes, and it is worth asking. It is a small request that is often granted, and it materially changes how the next admissions office reads your file. In a case with no licensing regulator to satisfy, the record is essentially the whole of what follows you.

How do I check what I owe?

Ask in writing for the return-of-funds calculation done when your enrollment ended and check the dates against the date it actually ended — errors are common and create balances you do not owe. Then compare the published refund policy and your enrollment agreement’s cancellation terms against what you were charged.

Why does an institutional balance matter so much?

Because it is usually what triggers a hold on the transcript you need in order to move on. Resolving a disputed balance is therefore not a side issue — it is often the step that unlocks everything else.

I am on an F-1 visa. What comes first?

The immigration clock. Status ends when the designated school official terminates the SEVIS record, and there is no sixty-day grace period after a termination as there is after a normal completion. Raise the SEVIS question in writing immediately and get immigration counsel working in parallel with the school-side appeal.