RESOLUTION ON DROP/ADD LATE FEES FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS TO THE ADMINISTRATION OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY-BLOOMINGTON

WHEREAS, in the last year, Indiana University imposed a financial penalty on graduate and professional students for changing courses after the first week, so that, after September 8th, graduate students who dropped a class and then replaced it with another class forfeited a portion of the graduate tuition fees paid, even if the class was covered by a fee remission or a fee scholarship (graduate students lost $874 for switching from one 4-credit-hour course to another in the second week of classes, $1724 for switching in week 3, $2574 in week 4, and $3425 in week 5), and

WHEREAS, academic departments at Indiana University are not always able to offer finalized course listings to their graduate students until the month before the start of the academic year, and

WHEREAS, in some academic departments at Indiana University, incoming students are not able to register until the week before the start of the academic year, and

WHEREAS, academic departments generally post tuition remissions of Student Academic Appointees (SAAs) or tuition scholarships at different points of time in the month of August, and

WHEREAS, the Bursar imposes substantial fees, in the form of interest, on SAAs if they register for their classes prior to the fee remission posting to their account and are unable to cover the balance of their tuition, and

WHEREAS, many graduate students thus have incentives to wait until immediately prior to the beginning of the semester to register for classes, and

WHEREAS, most graduate courses meet only once per week and only use the first week to present the syllabus, and

WHEREAS, these constraints ensure that graduate students do not have enough time to assess the quality of the teaching and content of the available courses by the second week of classes, and

WHEREAS, Indiana University seeks to ensure the highest quality training for every graduate student, and

WHEREAS, these strict financial penalties effectively prevent and deter graduate students from making changes that may be necessary to ensure that they receive the highest quality training, and

WHEREAS, this body does recognize a need for some regulation, so as to ensure that graduate courses have sufficient enrollment numbers to stay on the books,

BE IT RESOLVED, that we, the undersigned, recommends that the administration revise this policy to adopt more lenient and flexible penalties on graduate students who make course changes after the first week of classes. This body would recommend that Indiana University allow graduate students to make changes without penalty through the second week of classes and, after that, impose smaller financial penalties, as is done with the undergraduate community.