Changing the financial aid cutoff date from the fourth week of the term to the second week may seem like a simple solution to some minor problems that affect most of the student body. Instead, it seems that financial aid administrators are creating a solution to their own bureaucratic frustrations at the expense of students.
This shift drastically reduces the flexibility students desperately need while arranging their schedules and their lives–an action that, especially to a commuter school, is a defiant disservice to the student body. Even students who have more time to plan their schedules appreciate the current flexibility, which makes it possible to drop a class in the third or fourth week without worries of endless paperwork.
This change primarily affects how Portland State sees a student in terms of financial aid. Currently, at the end of the fourth week of each term, the school records the number of credits students who receive aid are enrolled in. This determines how much financial aid they receive.
Financial aid administrators say changing this census to the second week will prevent students from having holds on their accounts. They also say it will help delayed financial aid refunds disperse more quickly.
But these beliefs are based in estimation, not fact. Administrators cannot know for sure whether this change will in fact benefit students. What they can be certain of, however, is that when students are juggling class loads, work schedules, family problems and just life in general, a little flexibility goes a long way. Removing that flexibility, for what seems to be nothing more than another uncertainty in an overly perplexing and bureaucratic system, is unnecessary.