AUM Payment Plan

This is an editorial I wrote concerning AUM's payment plan.


Here we go again.
AUM has taken more flexibility away from students despite continued tuition increases.
AUM once offered a three-pay and four-pay payment plan. As difficult as paying tuition has become, these payment plans offered students and their families an alternative to bank loans and student loans.
In 2005, and giving students a rather short notice, AUM enforced a payment plan that required 50 percent of total tuition for a semester to be paid upfront. Following a payment of 50 percent, students were required to pay the remaining balance over a two-month period.
T he current payment plan required 50 percent to be paid by Jan. 5, 2007. The remaining balance will no longer be paid over a two month time period. Students must now make the full payment by Jan. 14, 2007, or they will not be able to keep their registered class schedule.
Currently, 12 credit hours cost $1912, including fees.
AUM has offered an alternative, but not in the way of a payment plan. The alternative is a loan program.
In a letter dated Nov. 21st, AUM announced that Bank Trust would take over the more flexible aspect of tuition payment plans.
The letter was obviously written as positive as possible. If one was not yet nauseous after reading the beginning, then most stomachs should have turned away from their Thanksgiving meals when they read the glistened, public relation touch of “AUM is proud to partner with Bank Trust to offer this service to its students. In addition to ease of service, students will benefit from opportunities to establish credit and develop with a respected financial institution.”
Give me a break.
Sounds as if one is reading a business letter. Only problem is that AUM is not a business. They fall under the state umbrella of public universities.
Nowhere in the letter was a logical explanation for the move to the loan program, but they did not fail to mention every method of payment if one could manage making two lump sum payments in ten days.
The only logical reason for the move to the loan program is perhaps too many students neglected to fulfill payments on the payment plan. While this may be the case, when one signed and agreed to the payment plan, all collection fees and cost are the student’s responsibility, not AUM’s.
The easy answer to that problem is to take note of those who failed to finish payments on the plan and take away their eligibility. Do not proceed in punishing the ones who kept their word.
Basically, AUM is all, but forcing students and families to pay tuition via bank loan. Most use the payment plan in order to avoid taking out a loan and/or the hassle of going through a bank.
According to a 2006 issue of the Montgomery Advertiser, AUM spent $20,000 on an independent study of people’s perception of AUM. Five hundred people were surveyed either via phone, online surveys, or interviews. One of the main issues of the surveys was “internal and external communications.”
Despite the independent study hearing of internal and external communications, AUM gave students less than a two-month notice of the new reformed payment plan. What made matters worse is that students and parents had the holiday season to also contend with.
Hopefully, Santa was extra special to everyone this go around or needy students happened to stumble upon a money tree.