One of the most stressful aspects of going to college for many students is figuring out how to finance higher education. 

Financing can require months of planning, applications, essay writing and interviewing. 

One would think that once the monetary rewards come in, the stressful part is behind them. They would be wrong.

David Adams, a senior environmental science major at UCA said, “Most of my interactions with the financial aid office have been frustrating at best. One of the primary reasons I chose to attend UCA was the financial benefit of doing so, which has made the incompetence of the financial aid office particularly disheartening.”

Adams said that interacting with the financial aid office to figure out how moving off of campus would affect his scholarships was particularly frustrating. 

Adams shared an email chain documenting his interactions with the office.

In the email Adams said, 

“I wanted to ask a few questions about how moving off campus would impact my scholarships and excess aid. (1) It’s my understanding that if I move off campus I’d lose the housing portion of my Distinguished Scholarship. Is that correct? (2) Can scholarships like the Governor’s Scholarship and the Distinguished Scholarship be used as excess aid? Or do they only apply for direct charges to the university? (3) Would I receive the scholarship money that originally went to housing and my meal plan back as excess aid? (4) Is there any way for me to get an estimate of what my excess aid would’ve been if I had moved out this semester? I’ve attempted to calculate it myself, but I’m unsure of how everything works.”

Adams received an email back from the financial aid office email which said, “1. If you are not living in UCA Campus Housing then you would not receive the Housing portion of your UCA scholarship. 2. Some students do receive excess aid when they have scholarships. 3. If your total amount of financial aid in any given semester is more than your bill for that semester, then you will receive some excess aid funds. 4. You will need to speak to the Housing office and Student Account office to see how your account might change.”

Adams said, “I was wondering if it would be possible for you to look at my account specifically and provide more detailed feedback. It would be greatly appreciated and allow me to make an informed decision about living off campus.”

Adams said that it was also frustrating interacting with financial aid to figure out information on his financial aid package and cost of attendance to enter into a payment request form that he needed to supply to a scholarship foundation.

Adams said, “Thankfully when I have asked to speak to higher-level staff in the financial aid office, my questions and problems are often easily addressed. However, the often long and frustrating process of receiving assistance or answers undermines the sense of support and clarity that students should expect.”

Adams is not the only student who has been frustrated with the financial aid office.

In an Instagram questionnaire that said “What are your experiences with the financial aid office?” user @mooseforehead replied, “Bad lol, literally have only helped me once. I refuse to go to them.”

Director of Financial Aid Kimberly Stubbs sympathized with frustrated students. 

“I understand. I try so hard to be sympathetic and have empathy too for you guys because I know it’s stressful,” she said.

“We try really hard to train our staff to take a step back and breathe and to listen to you guys because I know that it’s very stressful and all of these extra things you guys have to do just to get your bill paid…it’s a lot,” Stubbs said.

“We try really hard to be accommodating and answer questions as best as we can and to talk to students when they come in. I hope that students feel that they can come in and talk to us any time of the day,” she said.”

Stubbs said that she never wants students to feel as though the financial aid office doesn’t care.

Stubbs said, “I know that it is confusing, and it’s so there’s so much to maneuver with financial aid, and then with student accounts, and then with the registrar’s office, and then with housing. I mean, like, there’s so many things that students have to maneuver.”

Stubbs said she encourages students to not put off their financial aid questions. 

“Just come in, ask questions and if you don’t feel like you’re getting the questions answered then keep asking. Ask to see a supervisor, I don’t have a problem with that.”

“Make sure you feel comfortable leaving with the answer that you want.”

Stubbs said that students most often come to the financial aid office to get help on the FAFSA form.

“Last year the FAFSA changed, and so there was a very difficult rollout of the FAFSA last year…that definitely caused a lot of questions from students,” she said.

Stubbs said that students also frequently have questions about scholarships, especially the Arkansas Challenge and institutional scholarships.

“We get lots and lots of questions about, well, why didn’t I get my [institutional] scholarship? … So we try to help students through that, and talk them through that,” Stubbs said. “We try to give them a heads up… We send enrollment reminder emails letting them know, like the eighth day of class, you have to be enrolled in 15 hours on the eighth day of class or your scholarship is in jeopardy of not renewing. We try to do some communications like that.”

Stubbs said the office also gets a lot of questions from students regarding whether or not they can drop a class.

Stubbs said one of the biggest misconceptions that students had about the office is about excess aid.

“We don’t do excess aid, that is all done on the student accounts side. We process the aid, we put the money on the account in the beginning and then student accounts if there’s money left over student accounts is the one who is either going to direct deposit that into your bank account or write a check for it,” Stubbs said.

Stubbs said Student Accounts and Financial Aid work together very closely, especially during peak seasons.

Stubbs said that the main difference between the offices was between “who administers the aid versus who gives them the refund check.”

Stubbs said financial aid puts the aid on the account and student accounts pay the bills.

Stubbs said that working in the financial aid office had a lot of moving parts and in the peak seasons there was a lot of work to do.

In the fall Stubbs said that the office was getting 200-300 calls a day split among 19 staff members in the office.

 “It’s a lot,” she said.

“There’s so much and it’s always constantly changing that I think that’s the biggest thing with financial aid, is that, especially from when you have a new administration, which we do now, so like, now we’re all like, ‘Okay, what’s gonna happen now? What are they gonna do with this?’”

“Rules change, and logic changes, and reporting changes from year to year and so there’s just so many changes all the time with financial aid that we have to stay up on top of it,” Stubbs said. 

“Those scholarships have a lot of policy with them, and so you gotta always, like, read the fine print. And so we do a lot of that too. We do a lot of pulling policy print and policy out for students, or sending a link to the policy to the students so that they can see, like, you know, this is why your scholarship didn’t pay out. Or, this is what happened. This is why didn’t renew.”

“They think that that money is just going to automatically just appear on their account. And unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. We have to wait for the check to come, and then we can actually put the funds on their account. So at the first two weeks of school… there’s so many checks that are coming, in and out of our office and Student Accounts Office from all these outside scholarship opportunities that these students have. So that’s why it takes us time…It’s literally a hand process,” She said.

“And then we do all of those scholarships. We have to work those as they come in, and that first two weeks of school is literally when all of that’s coming at us. And so that’s why we say the first couple of weeks of school, you’ll see on our email that we’re Pete, we’re in peak season… because hundreds of students are calling us and because they’re trying to figure out, where’s my scholarship. Why isn’t it on yet?”

“It’s just an overwhelming amount of things that are coming all at the same time,” she said.

“It’s a lot even for our counselors, it takes them a good, full year cycle before they feel confident enough to feel like they’re [giving] the right answers and all the things,” Stubbs said.

Stubbs said that while some processes like federal aid packaging and institutional aid packaging utilized automated mass batching processes, there were several processes that had to be done manually by the office’s five financial aid counselors.

These manual processes include running institutional scholarship renewal reports, placing private scholarships on accounts, placing private loans on accounts, and placing summer awards on accounts.

“We have five financial aid counselors… they basically process any of the things that have to be done by hand. So think about that. There’s five of them for the entire campus,” she said.

Stubbs said, “Summer awarding is a completely different bird and it does have to be done manually.” Stubbs said that this includes the federal aid and institutional aid packaging which is normally automated.

Stubbs said, “These staff members really do care about you guys and many of them went to UCA and they had financial aid.”

“I know that it’s stressful and sometimes the wait time for some of the things we are doing can be frustrating and stressful. I hope by explaining the process it helps you understand why sometimes, especially during those peak periods there is a little bit of a longer wait for everything to happen because so many things have to be done manually,” she said.