Seniors troubled by graduation woes
Due to changes in the commencement process for Spring 2004, students applying for graduation this year found an unexpected surprise – a $100 late fee for applications submitted after the Oct. 15 deadline.
This came as a result of the university’s decision to actually award degrees at the commencement ceremony instead of handing out empty diploma covers and mailing the degrees a few months later, as has been done in the past, said Heidi Beck, associate registrar at Utah State University.
Students who have applied to graduate in the spring will receive an e-mail from the Registrar’s Office asking them to indicate whether or not they will be attending the commencement ceremony. From this list they will determine whose degrees must be printed and ready for commencement and whose can be mailed afterward, said Beck.
“Handing out diplomas at graduation has forced us to make our process more efficient,” Beck said. “Admittedly, we are still not as efficient as we would like to be.”
Previously, the fee for late graduation applications was $10.
“We did some reports and found that last year approximately 60 percent of the graduates applied late,” Beck said.
According to the reports, those interviewed said that an extra $10 was not incentive enough to get them to turn their applications in on time. Because the Registrar’s Office needs the applications to be turned in on time in order to have the diplomas ready on the day of the commencement ceremony, a larger fee was instituted, Beck said.
“At first, we were prepared not to allow any late applications,” Beck said. “As we talked to students and advisers we realized that it was in the best interest of the students to allow a late application.”
The $100 late fee was approved by the council of deans and the Provost’s Office as a way to “get students’ attention,” Beck said.
“The fee is to serve as incentive. We would be most happy if we never had to charge [it],” Beck said.
Since this is the first year the fee has been instituted, applicants found that the Registrar’s Office was very lenient in actually charging the fee. Students who began the graduation process on time were not charged the late fee, Beck said.
“We felt that it was important to show leniency during the transition from the old fee to the new,” she said.
However, despite efforts being made by the Registrar’s Office to make the application process more efficient, many students still encounter much difficulty in applying for graduation. According to the cover sheet of the graduation application, applicants must fill out the application, then take it to their adviser or department head and the dean of their college to get signatures before turning the application back in to the Registrar’s Office. According to the cover sheet, “this process may take up to four weeks.” But before they can even get the application in their hands, students first need to fill out a request for application form.
Some students have found that the only solution is to start even earlier than suggested.
“I started my application in April,” said Jana Ahlstrom, senior in family and consumer science, explaining that starting six months early gave her enough time to get all the paperwork taken care of well before the deadline.
“We also recognize that there is still room for greater automation and refinement to the graduation process,” Beck said, acknowledging that many problems still exist. Beck also told of a new degree audit system which the Registrar’s Office is developing to reduce problems encountered by applicants. The system will allow students to track their progress toward a degree by computer, alleviating the manual “bean counting” of credits that students had to do previously.
“Degree audit allows students to ‘try on’ other majors,” Beck said. “Essentially, a student can check his or her record against any major and quickly learn which requirements remain and which have been completed … It will ultimately eliminate the manual checking of transcripts for program requirements.”
This new program will be available to students and advisers by next April.
“Students truly are the winners with these new changes,” Beck said.
-sjeppesen@cc.usu.edu