PARIS to bar those owing over $1,000

Students have til Oct. 15 Students who owe the University more than $1,000 will be barred from using PARIS to register for spring semester classes, Associate Vice President for Finance Frank Claus said yesterday. Claus said Student Financial Services mailed approximately 4,000 letters last week, warning that if the recipients do not pay their balances by October 15 – or contact Student Financial Services to work out a payment plan – they will be placed on financial hold. Students placed on financial hold cannot register for the next academic term, receive academic transcripts or receive degrees from the University. Claus estimated that between 3,300 and 3,400 of the people who received letters are current University students. Among the others are students who are on leave or are inactive. The University is owed about $22 million in back payments on bursar bills. Claus said the new policy should reduce that to between $10 million and $12 million. Under a new policy, students will be required to pay off their balances for the current semester before they will be allowed to register for a subsequent semester. The new policy will force students to stay current with their payments to the University. For example, a junior in his or her fifth semester at the University must now pay for the fifth semester, which was billed over the summer, before he or she can register for the sixth semester. The financial hold only applies to students who have large outstanding balances – this semester, over $1,000. Students who owe less money, for items such as old Penntrex bills, will not be barred from using the Penn Automated Registration and Information System, Claus said. Claus said the policy was changed because letting the students go the extra semester without paying caused students to accumulate large debts – in some cases, more than $30,000. By forcing students to confront their debt earlier, Claus said, it will be easier for the financial aid office to help work out a repayment plan, before the debt gets too large. Another problem with the previous policy was that students who waited too long to settle their debt were missing deadlines for Stafford and other loan programs that they would would have been eligible for. Claus said the goal of the new policy is to help students who owe the University money to stay in school, before they get into a debt situation they can't get out of. He added that any students who run the risk of being blocked from PARIS had received at least six letters warning them of the possibility before last week's notice. The new policy will bring the University's procedures for collecting on debt closer into line with those of other Ivy League universities, although the University's will still be more lenient. At Brown, Columbia and Cornell universities and Dartmouth College, the balance that triggers a financial hold is much lower than the University's $1,000. At those universities, financial hold also means a near-total cut-off of university services. At Brown, Columbia and Dartmouth, students lose their health services while they are on financial hold, and at all four of the schools, students on financial hold lose their library privileges. Claus said University students, even on financial hold, will not lose these services.

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