Apr
11
2003

and where's my tuition money going?

Warning: Rant ahead.

I’m spending a lot of money to go to Georgetown for grad school. It’s about $1,000 per credit hour times 9 credit hours per semester. Plus fees. Federal loans have covered most of the tuition so far, but not all. So I still owe a bit for this semester, and have to pay it before I can pre-register for fall.

Me being me, the pre-reg deadline is tomorrow, and since the Student Accounts office is only open M-F, I have to pay it today (thankfully, payday). So I called the Student Accounts office at lunch to make my payment over the phone and was told that they only accept payments through the mail or in person.

A lot of money — and a lot of my money — goes through Georgetown Student Accounts. And they can’t afford to put in a telephone or online bill payment system? Come on!

Posted at 1:44 PM in personal, school

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Comments

OK, yeah, so there is a legitimate reason.

It’s called time.

I used to be a financial aid counselor with a school that turned 25 years old while I was there - there was enough red tape inherent in THAT system including the introduction of new and “better” computing devices and softwares to make every crosswalk in DC red.

Georgetown is what, 200 years old? More? The (get out your 505 notes, CCTers) switching costs of moving to a newer system while all the older records are still saved using older techniques is too high. Even if they implement a new credit payment system - they have to transfer every current student’s information to that system (I have seen such transfers crash, and administrations panic) and they have to create and implement a whole set of new cross-departmental prodcedures to go with the changes. Those two alone…. Plus, such software costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for a school the size of GU. My alma mata, SBC, made a smooth transition to PeopleSoft because the school only has 700 students at any given time. Liberty U., which has 5000 undergrads and 5000 external degree students (roughly the same size as Gu’s grad and undergrad schools) went through a year of Hell before the new system, including credit payment and online payment, was moderately useful.

Don’t get too mad at the people behind the counters. They can only operate within the limits of the book the administration gave them. =D

Posted by Pup on April 14, 2003 4:09 PM

Thanks for the explainer. I understand the clusterfuck that is the process of upgrading old systems, and the two Friday entries were written while I was in an extremely bad mood.

Still, I would hope that an institution like Georgetown, which has Wi-Fi internet access around campus and academic programs like CCT, would be able to be a little more forward-thinking with its technological offerings. (But then, it’s probably a lot easier to create new programs/offerings than to try to upgrade existing ones.) Features like a telephone/online payment system, or even simply the ability to accept credit card payments, are (to me at least) so widely available that it’s jarring when an institution doesn’t have them.

Posted by alykat on April 14, 2003 4:39 PM

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