The second drop process for students who failed to pay tuition and fees occurred at midnight Thursday.
However, some students were dropped from classes Aug.25 because of a human error in UH’s disenrollment process, a problem that a University official said has since been rectified.
"Any problem that occurs has the potential to affect enrollment," Director of Student Financial Services Gene Gillis said. "However, there will always be problems occurring. The better question might be whether the University has a quick response to identifying such problems and fixing them."
A total of 686 students, 162 graduate or professional students and 524 undergraduates, were mistakenly dropped.
The mishap occurred following an error during the drop process. The first part of the process, which drops students from their courses for nonpayment, had not finished running when a separate function, which disperses money into students’ accounts, began.
"The processes should be run consecutively rather than concurrently," Gillis said. "It was a human error."
These functions are run by the Office of Student Financial Services and the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid. One office failed to notify the other before running their program, causing the premature initiation of the second process.
The University identified the problem within three hours of its occurrence and corrected the inadvertent student disenrollments by Aug. 27. The reenrollment process for some students had to be done on an individual basis.
The Office of Student Financial Services and the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid improved communication to ensure this does not happen again.
"In the future, a message will be sent from the office stating that process one has been completed and it is now safe to run the second process," Gillis said.
The error in the disenrollment process is the first of its kind at UH.
