Registration, fees are as avoidable as death
Death and taxes.
It has been said that these are the two things you can never escape, but as students across Utah State University are quickly discovering, that list should include a couple more: registration and fee payment.
Though it can be difficult to cheat death or the United States government, Heidi Jo Beck, associate registrar at USU, said there are ways to make registering easy.
“I think a lot of the time students are unprepared when they register,” Beck said. “So when they finally get on the QUAD, they don’t know what classes they’re going to sign up for, or they didn’t realize that there was a lab required, or they didn’t realize that there was a pre-requisite.”
Beck said students should visit with their advisers to get prepared for registering on the QUAD.
Cindy Moulton, the assistant registrar, said, “It’s also really important for students to periodically check the QUAD and make sure they’re in the right classes. Sometimes we can see that they registered on the QUAD, but they might have put in the wrong call number, and mid-semester they discover they’re registered in a class they haven’t been attending and vice versa.”
Some students don’t even realize their mistake until grading time when they get a W or a WF on their transcript.
“At the end of the semester they’ll be in here saying, ‘Well I’m not even in the class, I haven’t been attending it,'” Beck said.
But by that point, there might be little the registrars can do to change a student’s transcript.
“Students need to be accountable for what they’ve done because it can come back to haunt them,” Beck said.
Some other problems occur when students sign up for a variable credit hour class.
“If they’re taking a variable credit class, the system will automatically register them for the lowest possible credits,” Beck said. “Students should get on the QUAD and input the number of credits for their variable credit classes.”
But even the QUAD isn’t error-proof.
“We’ve encouraged the students to use the QUAD,” Moulton said. “So many get on first thing in the morning that sometimes it reaches its capacity, and some students are kicked off. Hopefully, when we go to BANNER, it will fix that problem.”
BANNER is a new systemscheduled to become available to students for fall registration 2005. It will be a 24-hour service that will help remove the headaches involved with registration, including getting booted off the QUAD because it has reached maximum capacity.
There are many ways to register, including by phone, in person at the registrars office, or on the QUAD. Also, it’s important that students check the money side as well as the registration side.
Supervisor of the cashiers area, William Jensen, said the deadline for fee payments is De. 9. If fees aren’t paid by that date, Jensen said, the student’s classes will be dropped.
“Our favorite [method of payment] is when they get on the QUAD and pay with either credit card or e-check,” Jensen said. “Most students are registering on the QUAD, and if they’ll just pay on the QUAD, then they don’t have to stand in my line.”
Jensen said when students register on the QUAD, he doesn’t see them, they don’t get frustrated as easily and they get the payment done just the same.
An e-check is an electronic check that allows students without a credit card to pay online with their checking account.
Jensen also realizes that some might be hesitant about paying for school online.
“People are afraid that someone is going to steal their account number,” Jensen said. “But that doesn’t really happen very much.”
Randy Coleman, director of treasury management, said there really are many benefits to paying online.
“You may recall that we used to have lines down the hall and forever,” he said. “We don’t have that much anymore because students can pay at home or anywhere there’s a computer terminal. We just encourage students to come early and use the computer systems – it’s so easy.”
For those students without access to a computer, there are now four computer terminals located in front of the payment office students can use to pay online.
The cashiers said they will be more than happy to show students how it works.
Unlike the Grim Reaper, both the Cashiers Office and the Registrar’s Office really are here to help.
“I think that one of the biggest misconceptions about a registrar’s office anywhere, is that we’re the big meanies on campus,” Beck said. “We are very much the ones that are charged with making sure that the policies are applied evenly across campus, so that means a lot of the time we have to say no.”
But, Beck said, the office is filled with caring and good people who have the student’s best interest in mind – even if that means saying no at times.
“The reason we say no sometimes is that we want [the student’s] transcript and diploma to mean something,” she said. “If there weren’t policies, that would get out really quick, and academic prestige would fall pretty quickly.”
-mattgo@cc.usu.edu