UMBC does a number of things to shoot itself in the foot with students, the individuals every university relies on the most - not only for financial support through tuition and alumni donations, but through the ever-popular buzzphrase of "viral marketing," in other words, speaking highly of UMBC to friends and family.
One of the most frustrating things for me has been UMBC's differential enforcement of school "policies." Many policies are only invoked when a problem is perceived, others seem designed to stifle student life. Compounding this predicament is the seeming inability of the university to communicate its intentions to the enforcement arm, as I experienced Wednesday in the Hilltop parking lot, and many students have experienced with the posting "policy."
Show me a student who has had an issue with Student Billing, and I will show you a student who feels like leaving UMBC for good. While the billing process is understandably complex, it seems that a number of problems could be avoided if the people behind the computers in the Bursar's Office would do a cursory check of the items before hitting "send bill." Like many other situations at UMBC, communication between offices (in this case, financial aid, food services, etc.) and the enforcement arm (student billing) is abominable.
As somebody who is here on a scholarship, I have run into numerous problems as soon as I started making "nonstandard" choices, like living at Walker Avenue or off-campus, as I do currently. One of these problems are the so-called "refund" checks that get sent out when not all of the scholarship money is used. If you aren't taking advantage of student housing or meal plans, the value of your scholarship is reduced (another issue for another time). Unfortunately for students, this reduction occurs after "refunds" have already been sent out. The same situation occurs if you sign up for a meal plan.
What compounds this problem is that later, when the billing folks realize what's been doing on, you'll get slapped with a huge bill "DUE NOW," essentially demanding all the money you were "refunded" back. If you're not careful, they'll have forgotten to undo some of their previous steps, like increasing your scholarship once you sign up for a meal plan, and you'll end up paying the university extra!
How does this work in practice? Here's an example from my experience this fall.
- I sign up for classes, do not sign up for student housing, and have not yet selected a meal plan. "Refund" check is issued before the semester has even started.
- First day of classes, I sign up for a 10 meal plan.
- I am told that because I'm not signed up for housing or a meal plan, my scholarship has been reduced. Huge bill appears on my university account.
- Meal plan is billed, in addition to the previous bill.
- I end up with large bill, "DUE NOW," with numbers that are inaccurate. Of course, because it is due now, I am expected to pay this amount without question if I don't want late charges to be assessed.
For heaven's sake, UMBC. It's situations like this that make students want to curse the place that will eventually be our alma mater. You're your own worst enemy.
5 comments:
OK so at the beginning of this year I found some info on chart wells and the transcript stuff... and I thought cool, I'll check this out more because I'm getting some good info out of it and when my friends complain about stuff I can tell them why.
This is like the third post by you that just seems like a lot of complaining and no solutions, but it doesn't just sound like complaining, it sounds like whining. A three year old stomping his feet and yelling just do it for me seems like a good picture.
Isn't the point of being in the sga council to fix the stuff you find wrong, not just complain about it on the Internet where no one cares?
@anonymous,
I think SteelWolf's point is not so much to complain randomly as it is to generate discussion among the SGA and the students.
I myself have had issues in the past with the bursar's office and trying to sort out what of the information they send me is accurate. The "late fees" emails always bother me, because it seems like if something has made a change in how much money I'm paying the university (like increasing or decreasing a meal plan), by the time I am able to sit down and figure out why I am or am not paying a different amount, the late fees will be looming over me like a financial nightmare.
SteelWolf, to your point that different "branches" of the university higher ups should communicate more effectively, i couldn't agree more. There have been times when I've spent hours on the phone or walking between offices becuase office A was supposed to do something, but can't so they send me to office B who tells me that office A was supposed to take care of it.
Same place with the living and Walker and the scholarship. Except I decided not to sign up for a meal plan. When I was notified about the reduced amount (after I'd already deposited the refund cheque) they said to wait for the charge to show up on myUMBC. Hasn't shown up yet. Odd. Maybe it doesn't exist.
@ anonymous: It's not like this is the biggest issue on campus, sure. But I could have spent that half hour making sandwiches for the next week.
I had a few problems with financial aid myself. Several problems actually, and I've only been here 1 1/2 years. When I first came here, they never applied my loans to my account and I had a bunch of late charges on my account. We got them to take it off finally. Second, I tried to take a summer class to make up the credits I messed up in my first two semesters and found out it costed $270 per credit. I decided to try to stick it out anyway but the bill was too much so I tried to drop it about 1 week into classes. They took forever to process it (because apparently I had to completely withdraw from the school for the semester before I could drop it) and when they finally processed it, they were trying to still make me pay full price. I managed to get it down to half price with a complaint letter but I still got stuck with the late fee. Third, they gave me my financial aid awards and then suddenly stripped it away from me when I didn't turn in my tax information "on time", which they NEVER designated a due date on in the first place. The reason I even turned it in so late is because in my first year, they let me turn it in sometime in October without reprocussions. So I figured I could wait a little bit since I had to work and had no time to really get all the information together yet. It took a good three months to get that settled and by that time, I had to buy my own books and drop one of my classes 'cause I couldn't afford to buy the books. I also got a late fee while I was waiting for them to process my tax information...Now, I was trying to fix my schedule since some of the class times I picked wasn't going to work and last week I dropped a class and only had 10 credits (but I also added a class to my hold list, just in case). I added a new class the beginning of this week and have 13 credits again but somehow, they managed to bill me as a part time student instead of a full time student (shouldn't they have checked that first?). Now I have to get THAT straightened out.
I have a lot of problems with UMBC. The class schedule was clearly not designed for working, commuting students. Most of the classes I need/can take all occur on pretty much the same times or overlap. And even then, most of the classes are in the middle of the day so I have a hard time fitting my work schedule around them. A lot of times, I've had to seriously dig around to find policies and rules to certain procedures when it should really be readily available. And when I do find it, it can be very vague and ambiguous. This GFR system is making it very difficult to get my schedules right...and I took MATH100 and for some reason its acting like it doesn't count for the M GFR requirement!! I don't even know who I go to to get that straightened out! And Jesus Christ UMBC takes way too long with the grades. I often need to see my grades for my last classes to plan my schedule for the next semester (pre-requisets and all) and if I don't see my grades, I can't really know what schedule I'll be able to take. Plus a lot of these classes should have way more time slots or more seats because they get closed really, really fast. This is the fourth semester I haven't been able to get the classes I wanted or was only able to get one or two classes I need for the GFR requirement...ARGH! I want to transfer!
Is anyone else having similar problems to these or am I doing something wrong? If I'm doing something wrong...how can I do it right so I can better enjoy my "career" at UMBC???
Wow, that's a lot of stuff! I have to say though, you've got a great attitude about wanting to do what it takes to better enjoy your time at UMBC.
Some of the most frustrating things, like grades, just can't be changed overnight. While there are certainly a lot of opportunities to work toward getting things changed, that doesn't help your immediate situations.
I'm far from being an expert, but for class scheduling and financial aid issues my best advice is to get information. I've learned the hard way that often, the people involved that you expect to give you relevant information won't - and they most certainly won't go out of their way to give you information. By asking the right questions, however, you can obtain the information you need to proceed all by yourself.
Things like deadlines and requirements are key - when you meet with financial aid, ask when you need to have -everything- turned in by, then aim to get it in before that time. When you meet with your adviser, ask questions.
Finally, working your way through college is difficult, and I agree, the system isn't really set up to make things easy. It's not just UMBC though. You may have to be prepared to take a few extra semesters to get everything finished. It's also better to take fewer credits and do well, knowing you won't have to repeat classes, than to pile things on and get poor grades.
Feel free to contact me if you need help with anything. I'm in my last semester here so I can usually either answer questions or point you to somebody else who can. My department in SGA is also looking for students who are interested in putting the effort in to make one of those slow changes I was talking about earlier, so if you're interested, drop me a line as well.
Best of luck to you!
PS - as for the billing, don't worry, they won't forget. The extra charges for being a full-time student will show up on your bill when you least expect it. :P
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