UNM-Gallup may have to disenroll students

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Officials at the University of New Mexico-Gallup are threatening to disenroll as many as 500 students who owe money to the college from the first semester or do not have their financial aid package in place by Jan. 9.

The spring semester begins on Jan. 20, which will give students time to get their financial situation in order before classes start, said Paul Kraft, the branch’s student services director.

This policy follows procedures that were in place at the branch before 2006. In that year, the main campus agreed to allow the branches to set up their own policies, and the UNM-G branch established a more lenient policy that basically allowed students to owe the campus money with the provision that it be taken care of by the time they graduated.

The tougher policy was recently put in place because of directives given by the main campus which was following orders from the state Department of Higher Education, Kraft said.

Under this policy, students would be allowed to carry over no more than $50 in debt. If they had more than that, they would not be allowed to enroll for the spring semester.

Tony Major, the branch’s business director, said that students with money still owed to the college could also meet with financial officials and set up a payment plan that would allow them to pay back any moneys owed to the campus from the first semester over a two to five month period.

In order to do this, however, students must have their spring financial aid package in order before Jan. 9.
Kraft said he did not know how many students currently owe the branch more than $50.

He said when the branch had the old policy of not allowing debt to be carried over from one semester to the next, between 300 and 500 students would be affected.

Kraft encouraged new students to register early so that their financial aid application has time to be approved and so they can clear up any problem and put a payment plan in place if they need to go that route.

Most of the students who had registered in the fall should not be affected, and if there is no money owed, their financial aid package should roll forward into the spring semester.

Beginning Jan. 5, the college plans to make an all-out effort to help students — both old and new — to enroll online and to check out the status of their financial aid applications by computer to make sure there are no problems.

Students will be directed to a computer lab in Calvin Hall once registration begins for the spring semester on Jan. 5 until classes start on Jan. 20. Once in the lab, they will be shown how to look up their financial aid information.

Information: Campus’ financial aid office (505) 863-7663.