The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

SCORES of angry and weary College of the Bahamas students convened under tents for the second consecutive day on Tuesday expressing frustration with a payment system many said forces students to “endure the unforgiving wait or miss out on needed classes.”

A week away from the start of COB’s Spring 2016 semester, hundreds of students attempting to make payments for upcoming classes started to assemble at the Big Pond campus shortly after dawn on Monday, January 4. Students said as the time progressed that morning, dozens of their schoolmates with their recently issued scholarship letters joined the already “insanely long” line.

According to reports, long lines remained well into the waning hours of Monday night.

On social media, many students expressed frustration over the attitudes of staff and a lack of organisation at the institution.

A statement released by COB late Monday night said an “inordinate amount” of returning students were on lines at the school attempting to either make payments by cash, scholarship or arrange a deferred payment plan.

COB’s statement said: “Some students waited for the last minute to make payments and opted not to use the online payment system. The very same online payment system was credited back in August 2015 as the most uneventful and smooth payment and registration process the College has experienced in several years.”

COB said all students waiting on lines on Monday received food and refreshments and were notified that they could return the following day with no late fees charged and no penalties. The statement said students were also told they could stay on the line and college staff would remain until all students were accommodated.

The statement added that COB President Rodney D Smith, with the assistance of the President of COBUS Keyron Smith, would provide coffee and donuts to students registering on Tuesday.

Davinia Blair, interim vice-president in the Office of Advancement at COB, stressed on Tuesday that while a firm conclusion had not been made yet on what caused the long lines over the two-day period, the institution was doing all it could to both deal with the matter and troubleshoot to prevent similar issues in the future.

“We are still trying to understand fully, all of the things that feed into that,” she admitted.

One issue could be the number of students who received scholarship letters on Monday.

A third year student from the School of Education told The Tribune on Tuesday that she, a recipient of the government’s bursary scholarship, learned that letters associated with the award were “ready to go” from a friend on Monday.

“Once we got the news, many of us on the bursary (award) made a point to go across to the Ministry (of Education) to pick up our letters. There was a small group (at the Ministry of Education), so I knew there would have been a slight line back at COB.”

The student, whose focus is primary education studies, said once she arrived on COB’s campus she had been notified that a number of other scholarship recipients also received letters of approval on Monday.

It is estimated that roughly 1,000 of the institution’s more than 5,000 students receive full or partial monetary aid through scholarships.

Offices at the college closed for the holidays on December 18. That allowed students one full business week, December 14-18, to complete registration, scholarship letter acquisitions and make payments.

Ms Blair insisted that the college had to do more to determine why such a large percentage of students opted to wait to register and make payments so close to the deadline.

“The academic calendar that COB has – and I stand to be corrected – I don’t think it is substantially different from academic calendars around the world. You have a semester that ends in December and one that starts right away in January and you know that semester is ending in December so, in terms of planning ahead I think that if families were able to plan ahead they would have. It may really be that we have an economic challenge,” she said.

The College of the Bahamas is presently transitioning into the University of the Bahamas.