Decrease in number of students dropped for nonpayment
By: JAMES CLAIBORNE
Staff Writer
STLCC-Meramec extended the dropped for nonpayment date from Dec. 11 to Jan. 6 for the spring 2016 semester.
Dec. 11, 2015 was the original payment or payment plan deadline.
However, after evaluating the campus nonpayment list, there was a large amount of students who had not paid or made payment arrangements for the spring semester, Acting Vice President of Academic Affairs Janet Walsh said.
There were two calling campaigns on campus to reach out to students, Walsh said.
December was when the first calling campaign took place and there were more than 1500 calls made to students as a reminder for them to make payment arrangements, Walsh said.
The second campaign took place in January for about 915 students. Nine-hundred and fifteen students were not dropped though, it was more like 400, Walsh said.
Messages were left for many students, but she had the pleasure to talk with many students who were appreciative that they got the phone call and said thank you and that they forgot it was coming up because they were busy with the holidays. In her opinion it was successful, Walsh said.
“The penalty day is a fluid day because what we had done in the past wasn’t working well. It didn’t serve our students,” Walsh said.
We changed it this semester to be more student friendly. Students dropped from classes for nonpayment is down by 2.2 percent, Walsh said.
We will take a look at our process for this semester and determine if it was a good process. Do we want to continue it or do we want to do something different for the next semester, Walsh said.
There is not yet a definite decision if this approach will continue.
After we get over the initial busiest first couple of days of classes, then we will start having conversations about what worked what did not work or if we want to do the same thing, Walsh said.
“Our email open rate is very low on this campus, or district wide, not just the Meramec campus and it’s like less than 10% of students who open up my.stlcc email,” Walsh said.
In the past, students were dropped from their classes who did not meet the financial aid requirements. Now, students are not dropped from their classes if they make a good faith effort and made payment arrangements, or paid in full, Walsh said.
