A discussion on tuition payment policy

Our panelists debate how to improve the tuition payment process

Devin McDonald
Devin McDonald

Dan Osborne, ArtSci ’12

Pacta sunt servanda: “pacts must be kept.” This Latin expression is the concept behind modern contract law. Modern civilization has been built around this concept and saves us from reverting to the barbarism of ‘whoever has the biggest gun wins.’ Indeed, within the context of modern society, practically everything derives from one contract or another.

When one thinks of a contract, he usually thinks of the explicit sort. Those are the sorts of contracts that you sign when you buy a car or a house or set up a Twitter account.

These contracts are only a small portion of the total number of legal contracts in society; many more are of an implicit nature.

The intent of implicit contracts is to make small things, say purchasing a hamburger, easier than going through the route of an explicit contract.

Most of the time, implicit contracts are limited to small, inconsequential contracts. Unfortunately, our contracts with Queen’s University are implicit too.

Entering Queen’s University, students are presented no clear contract regarding how much they are to pay the university and what they are to get in return. We’re trusting that the university will always function in our best interest and we really have nothing to hold them to account if they fail.

Most students have no problem with the University and their implicit contract with the body, but a minority are subject to injustice.

Some engineering students thought they had finished paying their fees at the beginning of the year. But—thanks to the lack of a real, substantive contract—students are being charged at additional $3,000.

The change to the GPA system, the charges on engineering students and everything else at this university should have been subject to an explicit contract with students, a contract which is lacking today.

Lindsay Kline, ArtSci ’11

Queen’s tuition costs are reaching an all-time high, and thus represent an all time low for the University’s reputation among students.

Everything from the $3,000 mistake the Registrar’s Office made—affecting 30% per cent of engineering students—to the new tuition payment deadline of Sept 1. The administration is becoming less and less popular among students, not that it ever was in the first place.

For some students, the ability to pay tuition costs is a matter of phoning home and asking for the money. For others, tuition is more of a hurdle that necessitates prolonged planning and saving. Thus, the University’s recent choices associated with tuition are problematic for the very people they are trying to aid—the students.

The administrative institution responsible for the operation of finances and student tuition costs is poorly and inefficiently run.

The open environment whereby students are asked to provide personal financial information is a violation of privacy and is an embarrassing experience for many students. Rather than providing a confidential and supportive environment for students, the Registrar’s Office mirrors that of a business based on paper work and job security rather than the people they are told to serve.

Recent changes to tuition continue to exacerbate the divide between students and the administration. The inability for non-Ontario students to receive funding because of their out-of-province status and the vagueness associated with opt-out fees are just more examples indicative of the problematic processes the financial sector of Queen’s has overlooked. Students put a great amount of trust in their university to be honest, helpful and supportive. At the moment, the new stipulations for Queen’s student tuition are not representative of this.

Possible solutions include tuition caps, lowering admission rates or at the very least having private rooms for students to discuss their financial woes. Until positive changes are implemented, the registrar’s office will continue to be seen as that ghastly place we have to go, but really don’t want to.

Devin McDonald, ArtSci ’13

As a student who is affected greatly by changes to the payment structure, I have a particular interest in the topic at hand. I don’t have the privilege of being able to pay the total sum of my tuition at the beginning of the year, so I have the cost of my tuition deferred, as I’m dependent on OSAP to pay for the cost of my education.

Assuming I’ve filed the necessary OSAP papers in time, I would find no changes to my own fee schedule, as the administration has made a provision for OSAP students.

The victims—if I may employ such a term—of the changes to the payment schedule are those students who cannot pay the full sum by Sept. 1 due to alternative non-Ontario based governmental funding.

What the administration has neglected to consider is the way in which they’ve saddled lower income student with the extra stress of meeting another, earlier deadline.

The argument holds that the Queen’s administration is just building barriers against low-income access to high quality education. The Registrar’s Office isn’t particularly accommodating to low-income students—there is little attempt on the part of the administration to lead students to believe the Registrar’s Office is there to help student overcome financial hurdles. 

Yet I depart from my critique in that I don’t label the changes in the fee schedule as unwarranted. Prior to passing judgment on the decision, we ought to weigh the actual cost of the changes. Weight ought to be placed in consideration of Queen’s current fiscal crisis and the effects it has on their fiscal scheme.

At the end of the day, the changes will cost a small portion of students rather minor debts as a result of the sub-prime interest rates Queen’s charges on late tuition payments.

I don’t mean to be crude or to suggest that $50 is an irrelevant sum of money, my point is that this program raises a fair chunk of change just from the interest earned on earlier acquired capital.

The cost is relatively small on the student end. However, I do hope the administration will take a more earnest consideration of the process by which students can evade charges due to extenuating circumstances. 

Elamin Abdelmahmoud, ArtSci ’11

The Registrar’s Office could well be equipped to deal with all special cases and special circumstances of students unable to register for their classes under the new “commitment to pay” policy.

I’m quite certain that the Registrar’s Office isn’t filled with people who are purposely attempting to obstruct the futures of Queen’s students, and I’m also quite assured that the new policies aren’t intended to be a hurdle thrown in the path of low-income students.

That said, the problem persists: the very existence of this panel discussion is proof that there are anxieties and questions revolving around the new university payment policy.

I would like to suggest that the questions that exist and persist are not directly resulting from the new policy structure, but instead from the history of the relationship between the Financial Aid Office and students who require it.

Every year, students stand in the OSAP line at Gordon Hall to pick up their loan documents, or deal with private concerns. The nature of the physical space and the way Financial Aid is structured allows for only one scenario to play out, over and over again: with many students behind you in line, you must loudly talk about your financial situation with the officer at the desk, while having to deal with the fact that there are 10s of other students behind you.

This experience can be quite dehumanizing to some students because of the personal nature of their visit.

Should they pass this particular hurdle, they may be faced with the obligation to answer numerous (relatively invasive) questions about their exact personal and financial situation.

Again, I’m assured that everyone in Gordon Hall means well. But the experience comes with hardly any respect to the privacy of the individuals who are going to Financial Aid.

What I mentioned are mere examples of a pre-existing lack of trust, and a justification to the level of wariness that low-income students have when it comes to dealing with the Financial Aid office.

If these students trusted that the culture in that office is structured around protecting their privacy and dignity, I doubt we would have these anxieties.

But that trust relationship doesn’t exist, and when you add additional strain to the relationship through the policy changes, the understandable anxieties are exacerbated.

By fixing these symptoms, we can assure students that the new policy will not threaten their futures.

All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.

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