Rutgers Term Bill Panic

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Every student wants the school year to start off on a smooth start. However this year, many students have their tuition bills to thank for the somewhat rocky jump into the 2023 Fall semester.

Hundreds of students across all the Rutgers campuses have encountered issues with their term bills this semester, ranging from incorrect scholarships to poor communication. While this could have been an easy fix with proper guidance and contact, students who reached out to the Admissions Office, a student-run office, or the Financial Aid Office found very little help. After vigorous attempts, many students’ issues and emails were ignored or they were hung up on. Still, after the issues were “fixed” many students’ term bills haven’t been updated, leaving the offices’ solutions as rather lame and short-winded.

Nursing student Sofia Aseron explained how her issues began when her monthly payments were overdrafted, paying the installments for two months over only one. She tried to reach out to the Financial Aid Office, who gave her an email address to which no one would respond to help her.

Yasly Nunez, a Criminal Justice major, shared that her term bill had multiple unnecessary fees that didn’t apply to her. Alex Brasberger, a Math major, ran into a similar problem when he emailed the Financial Aid Office about issues with his scholarship, receiving emails saying that the issue had been resolved, even though nothing had been fixed on his bill. He explained how he even called the office, getting a response that it would be fixed soon, though it still has not been fixed as of now.

On other Rutgers campuses, students have run into similar problems. Lillie Widmer, a Track and Cross-Country runner at Rutgers-New Brunswick, voiced how her problems arose when her scholarships didn’t show up on her term bill. Upon realizing that none of her team members’ scholarships were correct on their term bills. She further commented on how term bill pay dates have been delayed, but still, no one would alleviate the mistakes made concerning their scholarships.

The University needs to prioritize better communication and problem solving when it comes navigating through errors made to term bills. While the issues themselves are aggravating, everyone’s biggest frustration seems to be the lack of communication across all campuses. The spread of this issue proves that this issue isn’t as much to do with the employees and students working in these offices, but more with the University at large and its failure to train or help these offices when large amounts of issues arise.

It’s concerning to think of how this can carry over into the next semester. Already a month into the fall semester with very little resolutions offered for the errors of this fall term bill, it is a very good chance that these issues will carry on into the next semester.

Hopefully, as students bring more and more attention to these issues–and with the continued attempts to get their issues fixed–the Admissions Office and Financial Aid Office will prioritize and handle future errors.