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Problems raid financial aid

The Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid is a necessary component to a successful university and appears to give students some relief. It could be the third word of its title — scholarship — that incites good vibes. Maybe it’s the concept of aid itself. Or, if nothing else, the notion that there’s one building of several on this campus that makes its livelihood out of assisting its patrons indiscriminately, rich and broke alike.

But when you visit this building on business, you realize that you’ve been fooled. If someone graphed a pie chart out of our university’s ailments, from the man-holes on Wheeler Street to mood-dependent office hours, they’d be hard pressed to find room to fit in the issues that reside in the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid.

Whatever choices you make during your tenure at this institution, none of them are conceivable until you’ve paid your tuition and fees — to accomplish this, you need to take a field trip to the little building by the parking garage. And even once you’ve arrived, there’s no assuring that it will be successful.

The office could benefit from brainstorming some solutions to the issues that seem to continue being ignored. Even before the obvious incongruities of online inaccessibility and the low likelihood of being waitlisted with a single digit, the office could be greatly improved by altering its information distribution methods. A study hasn’t been conducted, but it seems a fair amount of its visitors pass through because they simply have no idea what has happened to their funds.

Those that had the luxury of forewarning may have received an absurdly vague email. These look more like badly worded ransom notes than Tier One notifications. The unlucky ones show up to the office because they’ve got nowhere else to go after discovering moments before class that they’ve been dropped. It isn’t until they find time to check their email hours later that they see they’d been warned of impending fines only minutes before their morning classes. They had all of half an hour to save their semester.

The office’s hours aren’t doing them any favors either. It’s as if maximum occupancy must be reached before its employees can take off for lunch. That isn’t a slam on the building’s personnel, but with a clientele that ebbs and flows like a steady current, the hours of operation ought to reflect the populous. This would mean that around noon a reasonable amount of personnel should be on staff. Ideally, it would resemble service based on the customer. Because that’s what a university really is — a service — and keeping a customer waiting is no way to stay in business.

This isn’t to say that the office doesn’t have its own problems: budget cuts, staff restructuring and marketing shifts take a toll on the way an operation is run. We know it’s tough. But, all concessions given, there are only so many excuses to make. And if the University really wanted to give its students something to shout about, they could start with making it a little easier for them to stay here.

Bryan Washington is a creative writing and sociology senior and may be reached at [email protected].

6 Comments

  • You should take a more positive outlook at this issue. This is part of your higher education. After dealing with UH’s bureaucracy for four years, you will be better equiped to handle the many pointless bureaucracies you will encounter in life. Need to protest your property tax valuation; your time at UH will have given you the knowledge that “no” only means you haven’t spoke to the right person yet. Need to get improper charges removed from your cell phone bill; your time at UH will have taught you that the first person you talk to will never help you, that you need to go higher up to get results. Need to get a property variance from the city; the time you had to petition to get a non-approved course to count as an elective in your major will have tought you about persistence. In short, while the student support services at UH have always been lacking, you are a better person for having gone through it. 😉

  • Bauer Alum, I hate to tell you this but UH is one of the most poorly run institutions I have had the pleasure of attending. The University lacks a student-centric approach that most other Universities have and instead takes an economic-centric stance with the Student be the last of its concerns. I once helped a friend of mine who during the semester went to Iraq as part of her duty with the Texas Air National Guard, when she was administered a levy of fees and threatened to have her classes canceled, regardless of her ability to get here and pay the additional fees. I went and talked to one of the senior business people to see what options were available only to be told, as a direct quote, “I don’t care, as long as I get my money.”
    Dealing with UH’s red tape is exhausting, talking with ATT and Comcast is a dream, and even their most incompetent people are more competent and willing to help, than anyone at UH.

      • 1. There is no h in sarcasm.
        2. Students themselves have become increasingly lazy. Only years ago was it the expectation of a student to read information prior to visiting an office or going to class. A lot of misinformation happens because instead of going to a resource like the SFA website beforehand, a student asks another student, and of the 40,000+ here, no two student situations are ever alike. You want better service? Inform yourself first. Even if you don’t understand it at first, you at least gave some effort.
        3. SFA handles disbursement of money. SFS (Student Financial Services) handles billing. That is often confused among EVERYONE on campus, including staff. Let’s get that right. Do you owe money? SFS. Were you expecting aid to cover that bill? SFA.
        4. The University personnel is not off the hook in this, but UH really needs to establish a culture that holds students more accountable. UH cannot accommodate everyone; and for those that it cannot accommodate, find another place that does.

  • It’s great to see this issue coming to light for the students to discuss. I am am member of the SGA here at UH, and also happen to sit on the Advisory Board for the Scholarship and Financial Aid department.

    I know that there are issues with the process, and so do the administrators. We hold monthly meetings, and there isn’t a meeting that passes that these issues aren’t discussed. We talk about potential problems and solution, but we are open to outside ideas. If anyone has anything to add I would gladly bring it up to the group. Feel free to add useful suggestions, but remember that just complaining about a problem won’t get us anywhere. I’ll check back here regularly and hope to see some great ideas coming from the student body.

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