Additional grant given to remove registration holds

Low-income students recieve additional $500

Students are used to getting catalogs, bills and credit card company offers in the mail. But some students recently received good news. According to Director of Financial Aid Howard Thomas, about 400 to 500 students recently received the news of an additional $500 in their financial aid grant.

He said that the grants went to "students with the highest financial need and lowest income." President Nancy Dye said students with family incomes below $30,000 a year received the additional grants.

The increase was enacted to alleviate chronic problems some students have with registration holds. According to Registrar Lori Gumpf, about 500 students have registration holds every semester. Dye said that the majority of those students are students from low-income families.

The money for the grants came from the College's unrestricted scholarship fund.

According to Gumpf holds can arise not only from student accounts, but also from failure to sign loan forms, scholarships that don't come in, and failure to apply for financial aid, or something more serious.

"Despite all of our efforts in the past, there are still huge numbers of students on registration holds," said Assistant to the President Diana Roose. Around this point in the semester the number of students with registration holds is down to around 50.

"The registration hold problem prompted a look at financial aid packages to low income students." Roose said. "The registration holds are a symptom of a much larger problem."

"This is a good example of administrators trying to meet immediate needs and looking as well to the long term," said Roose. "A lot of these problems can't be solved by one department alone."

To address these problems, the Enrollment Management Team was formed to look at the enrollment and registration process. The team is composed of a group of administrators from offices such as the Registrar, Financial Aid and Student Academic Affairs. It is still considering ways to improve the enrollment process.

Gumpf, a member of the team, mentioned that one solution under consideration is to switch the payment deadlines to before the semester. Currently, students are penalized with registration and enrollment holds only if they have not paid for the past semester.

"It is being discussed to make policy match practice," Gumpf said. "How to do that is yet to be determined."

Roose said mandatory prepayment is "under consideration as well as a number of other considerations." She explained that any changes will be made within a context of understanding student needs as well as trying to streamline billing procedure. "None of these proposals are at the status of an official recommendation," she cautioned.

Roose said, "This is not the last piece of information you'll hear about registration holds."