Credit cards: it’s no small change

If you fancy a bottle of Coke or a sugary snack but don’t have the cash, you can indulge your sweet tooth by adding a buck fifty to your credit card bill. Several vending machines throughout Kwantlen give students the option to swipe their VISA or Mastercard, but that’s a convenience students can’t use when it comes time to pay their tuition.

The school chose to end credit card payment for tuition beginning in the fall 2010 semester, explaining the transaction fees credit companies charge is “quite absorbent,” especially when thousands of students pay their tuition during the same period.

The university has stated that it expects to save $250,000. The money will go to students in the form of scholarships and bursaries.

Kwantlen isn’t the first post-secondary institution to implement the change. Both the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University have also stopped accepting credit cards as a method of tuition payment.

On the Kwantlen website, it states that the only things domestic students can’t pay with a credit card are tuition, student fees and KSA fees. Other fees and services are payable with credit.

According to the school, “you can use your VISA or Mastercard for the commitment fee but that’s as far as it goes.”

Credit card change inconveniences students

Kwantlen students are no longer able to pay domestic student registration fees and tuition with credit cards.

That may been old news, as the change was announced on July 14 and came into effect on Aug. 3, but the effect the new policy had on Kwantlen students isn’t.

According to the university website, “The change is aimed at reducing operational costs without cutting services or programs for students. In fact, $250,000 expected from the savings will be put towards additional scholarships and bursaries for students this year.”

But the inconvenience of the payment change has increased the number of annoyed Kwantlen students.

“I was super last minute paying my tuition, and I had no idea we couldn’t pay with credit cards anymore, so my dad and I had to rush to the bank to pay cash at the campus before it closed,” said Florencia Caula, a second-year Fashion marketing student.

“I guess it was my fault for not having checked, but it also threw me off that Kwantlen didn’t accept certain debit cards any more, either. The point is, people rarely have cash to pay tuition; we’re students,” she said.

Lisa Niskasari, also a Fashion marketing student had the same experience.

“I heard about the credit card change on the news, but I didn’t know they weren’t allowing credit union’s either. So I had to do the same thing as Florencia and pay with a cheque at the registrar, on the cusp of the registration deadline.

“I get that they want to put the money towards scholarship and bursary, but honestly I wouldn’t have known that had I not looked into it after I nearly lost my spot this semester. Thankfully I can still use credit for books,” Caula said.

According to Robert Hensley from the Kwantlen registrar’s office, the payment change did not have a negative impact on fall registration; in fact registration numbers were up 3.3 per cent.

“We only had a small number of formal complaints from students about the payment change,” said Hensley. “The only change was an increase of students paying with debit and cheque.”