FIRST EXPERIENCES WITH BUREAUCRAZY

I had my first real run-in with bureaucracy (bureaucrazy?) and red tape the other day, and saying the experience was unpleasant is a massive understatement.

Perhaps I should begin with the context–I attend college on a sponsorship, and my school has recently decided that students are required to pay 20% of their semester tuition if they want to remain enrolled in their classes. Furthermore, by announcing the development of this policy in late July, the school failed to give students adequate notice. For most of us, a month is not an adequate amount of time to move large amounts of money around, never mind procure this money from scratch, via either working, loans or scholarships. 

In my panicked, I-might-get-dropped-from-all-of-my-classes-and-therefore-fail-college state, I called the financial aid office. Three times a day. Every day. For a week. And not once was I able to speak to a representative. In fact, I wasn’t even placed on hold. The financial aid office was just unwilling to respond to phone calls. Or emails. Or open a case request. 

So I was forced to take my sponsorship letter, and high-tail it to campus to make sure that my financial aid situation was sorted out before anything disastrous could happen to my already precarious class positions. 

Long story short: I spent a little under an hour waiting for five minutes with a financial officer. I didn’t even require the full span of my five minutes–I spoke to him for around 30 seconds, handed him the envelope and was out. 

I spent an hour and some on the way up, an hour waiting, and was getting ready to spend an hour heading back home. All because of the cancel non-payment policy.

What a waste of gas.

But, in all seriousness, this policy brings to light several issues with the UC system, and quite frankly, I am aghast that a school I am normally very proud to attend would comply with such a nonsensical policy. 

Here’s why: 

1. It makes course registration even harder than it needs to be. This semester, the school has moved around the registration system, creating a system in which one cannot view their waitlist position, how full classes are, or whether or not they are eligible until they have hit the “enroll” button (and in my case, been redirected to a “Seats are reserved, so you shall wait in the wasteland of waitlists”). What the cancel for nonpayment policy does is drop you from every class you are enrolled if you don’t pay up. And if you do pay up, past the deadline, you are forced to enroll yourself in whatever classes are open. Even if they have nothing to do with your major at all. 
2. It puts students who aren’t in prime financial positions at a horrible disadvantage. As a public school, this mission of this school, first and foremost, is to educate students of the state of California. They are not a for profit institution, and while finances are certainly important, they should not dictate the quality of education students deemed qualified to attend this university should receive. Not only does this fail to protect the best interests of students, but by creating a large monetary barrier between students and an education, it puts students who are in a financial bind in a horrible position. While I am fortunate to have the ability to move around funds of that size on short notice if I need to, I am completely aware that several other people around me are not able to. It sets a clear price (20% of a semester’s tuition, in fact) on a student’s academic future, something that should never, ever happen. 

Now, I know this rant may sound like I don’t think people should ever pay tuition, and that is certainly not true (although perhaps I will save that argument for another day). My issue comes from the fact that the institution is failing its student, and letting down the community that supports it as a whole. The fact that such a liberal-minded, progressive school should create a monetary barrier that prevents its students from achieving their full potential is disgusting. And more than that, it’s saddening.