Asshole University Policy: Shutting students out of the LMS until they pay

[downer]

So one place I teach has a policy of shutting students out of the LMS until they pay up. They do this about a month or so into the semester.

This especially effects students whose financial aid arrives late. Which happens sometimes.

This is a particularly big problem for online courses. I get the occasional pleading message from a student who has been shut out or who soon will be shut out, to let them continue to go the work in an online course even though they are not on the LMS at that stage. Sometimes they are reinstated.

It presents me with dilemmas of how to deal with the student, and what to do about their lack of participation in discussions when they are locked out.

You'd think that their faculty advisors would take a stand and write to their professors asking to give the student a break, but they never do anything.

Of course, sometimes the student just never pays and drops out.

Once I had a student get back to me the next semester asking to make up work for the previous semester because they had finally paid up. It's bizarre and ridiculous.

Do any other schools do the same?

[polly_mer]

Every institution has policies like this.  The unusual part is the timing of letting people attend for a month before paying or setting up a payment plan instead of disenrolling people in the first week for non-payment.

Why do you think people should get to be enrolled without being current on their payments?

[downer]

I've never seen another school that waits a month. Maybe they should be harsher and insist on payment in the first week, and shut out the students after that. Cruel to be kind, etc.  But letting them put in a lot of work to the semester only to then put the reponsibility on the professors to be nice is not a good move.

What if I say no to the students, and that if they miss classes and assignments they just lose the points? Then the student loses motive to stay enrolled and the school likely loses the money it was going to get. The school needs to have some policy about academic standing and work while temporarily disenrolled.

[research_prof]

I've never seen another school that waits a month. Maybe they should be harsher and insist on payment in the first week, and shut out the students after that. Cruel to be kind, etc.  But letting them put in a lot of work to the semester only to then put the reponsibility on the professors to be nice is not a good move.

What if I say no to the students, and that if they miss classes and assignments they just lose the points? Then the student loses motive to stay enrolled and the school likely loses the money it was going to get. The school needs to have some policy about academic standing and work while temporarily disenrolled.

I suspect they do that because they believe they put more pressure on students to pay like that.. If they disenroll students in the first week of the semester, the students will say "ok, no big deal". If they do it after a month, they students might say "Ok, I need to pay otherwise all my effort will be wasted".

Universities in the US are like all other businesses. They will do whatever it takes to make students pay and yes using shady business practices are part of the game.

[teach_write_research]

Maybe consider cc'ing Dean, Registrar, and Financial Aid people on every reply. Absolutely the institution needs to have limits. They also need to make sure that all the moving pieces support student learning. If students are getting blocked from classes because of financial aid delays, that's not good. Of course, students need to be timely with applying. And read emails.

So one place I teach has a policy of shutting students out of the LMS until they pay up. They do this about a month or so into the semester.

This especially effects students whose financial aid arrives late. Which happens sometimes.

This is a particularly big problem for online courses. I get the occasional pleading message from a student who has been shut out or who soon will be shut out, to let them continue to go the work in an online course even though they are not on the LMS at that stage. Sometimes they are reinstated.

It presents me with dilemmas of how to deal with the student, and what to do about their lack of participation in discussions when they are locked out.

You'd think that their faculty advisors would take a stand and write to their professors asking to give the student a break, but they never do anything.

Of course, sometimes the student just never pays and drops out.

Once I had a student get back to me the next semester asking to make up work for the previous semester because they had finally paid up. It's bizarre and ridiculous.

Do any other schools do the same?

[ciao_yall]

Academy of Art University would send the goons in and pull students out of class in front of their peers and bring them to A&R for a talking-to.

I mean, my GYM doesn't even do that to members who fall behind in their payments!

[FishProf]

FishProfU does this.  However, students who can show the pending Financial Aid are exempt. 

That was NOT the case when we first implemented the policy, but one semester of the chaos that ensued was enough to get the point.  Students also get ABUNDANT warning.

[Caracal]

FishProfU does this.  However, students who can show the pending Financial Aid are exempt. 

That was NOT the case when we first implemented the policy, but one semester of the chaos that ensued was enough to get the point.  Students also get ABUNDANT warning.

It just seems like the timing is strange and has the effect of putting the burden on instructors. If you cut off students in the first week of class, it would be easy to just tell them they need to get it straightened out and as soon as they do, you can help them get caught up. It wouldn't be any more difficult than dealing with the students who add the class right at the end of add/drop.

A month in, the student has been in the class, done work and the semester is fully underway. If they often get reinstated, it is likely to be a pain no matter what. It would probably be easier to just send them materials than have to deal with helping them get caught up later.

[cathwen]

My university, which I will call UrbanU, has the same policy as downer's, and like downer, I don't much like it, either.  UrbanU has a history of reaching out to and recruiting students from disadvantaged populations.  The university's efforts have resulted in a very rich and diverse student body.  But these people are not wealthy, and paying their bills even in good times takes a lot of scrimping and scraping.  Even with good financial aid, it is hard for some families to come up with the cash.  Especially now, with so many people out of work due to the pandemic.

That said, I do acknowledge that the university is not a charity; students who enroll must pay.  I can only assume that delinquent students have been receiving frequent reminders about the need to pay bills or be dropped from the registers, so their need to pay should not come as a surprise.  And I hope that the Powers that Be will work with the students as much as possible to see that their month's work of work does not go down the drain. 

In the past, when I taught face-to-face, I would tell students to keep coming to class so as not to fall behind while they were figuring out their finances.  With an online class, I have no power to put students back into the course once they have been removed. 

[FishProf]

A downside of doing it within the Add/Drop period is that Financial Aid may not be finalized, b/c that depends on Credits taken.

Note: I wasn't defending FishProfU's policy above, merely stating it.

[downer]

There are pros and cons of different deadlines for students paying.

Partly what irks me about the way this university does this is that the administration doesn't reach out to faculty with instructions or guldelines, or even prepare them for the deadline. You just get students contacting you, asking for special treatment because of their circumstances. I asked the chair about it once, and they just said 'so unfortunate! do what you can'.

[polly_mer]

If the students responded in the first month to the reminders, then within rounding of no one would have problems that late in term.

[downer]

If the students responded in the first month to the reminders, then within rounding of no one would have problems that late in term.

That's true. And if they sorted out their financial aid promptly they would have the funds. But sometimes they are in difficult positions and financial aid gets delayed. But the university does not make allowances for that, apparently.

It's odd given how many statements the university issues of solidarity with students from populations who generally have those difficulties, and how often the university tells that the faculty should be sensitive to the difficult situations of students in difficult times. It's almost as if those statements were just for show.

[FishProf]

It's the "apparently" in your statement that raises my eyebrow.  I watched a colleague get herself into some hot water by storming into the registrar/bursar/financial aid offices demanding that the atrocity of her student being blindsided by being kicked out of classes for non-payment be corrected immediately.  I wasn't present at the rant, but I heard from people who were there that it was a doozy.

The student had been emailed repeatedly, had blown off at least two meetings with her financial aid counselor, and had only to walk in to financial aid and sign the disbursement papers, which had been ready for her two weeks before the hammer fell.

In dealing with oftentimes Byzantine administrative structures, we often don't know what we don't know.

[downer]

It's the "apparently" in your statement that raises my eyebrow.  I watched a colleague get herself into some hot water by storming into the registrar/bursar/financial aid offices demanding that the atrocity of her student being blindsided by being kicked out of classes for non-payment be corrected immediately.  I wasn't present at the rant, but I heard from people who were there that it was a doozy.

The student had been emailed repeatedly, had blown off at least two meetings with her financial aid counselor, and had only to walk in to financial aid and sign the disbursement papers, which had been ready for her two weeks before the hammer fell.

In dealing with oftentimes Byzantine administrative structures, we often don't know what we don't know.

That's true too. Maybe the administration is bending over backwarkds to accommodate the students in trouble. They don't share anything with the faculty and they don't give any advice to the faculty about how to respond to student requests for special treatment.