Pink card fee increase will benefit University, students

Editor,

I'd like to point out a couple of things I feel were glossed over in the Daily Lobo article about the increase in pink card fees.

First, this is not an across-the-board change for all pink cards. It only applies to pink cards that change credit hour totals. That means adding courses using a pink card or changing the credit hours on variable credit hours with a pink card. Those are the only cases where the $75 fee will apply.

Second, you should never need to use a pink card. That may be a bit harsh, but it is also true. Pink cards are meant to be an exception, not a rule. "After published deadlines" is printed in bold at the top of the form. This means that if you need to do one, someone screwed up. And it's not just students. Accidental instructor drops, miscalculated financial aid requirements, stray automated processes - these sorts of things happen. In order to get them fixed, generally, you need a pink card. But the burden of that fee isn't always the students' to bear. The dean can accept responsibility for those, in the case of internal errors, and I have witnessed instructors paying the fee out of their own pockets. I should note that not unlike the cards themselves, those situations are the exception, not the rule. It is the students' responsibility to make sure that they are properly registered.

Third, most universities don't allow these sorts of changes after the deadline. The reason is simple and transparently represented in the article itself: funding. Let us take a look at the lowball estimate of unreported credit hours last year: 2,400. The New Mexico Higher Education Department values a low level, tier-one course (something like a 100-level math course) at $130.30 per credit hour. Simple arithmetic yields a minimum of $312,720 of state funding gone. That's a lot of money, but it's still small in the grand scheme. What about when I tell you that a tier-three graduate course (say, a 600-level engineering course) is worth $1,364.98 per credit hour? It paints a bit of a different picture, especially considering that 2,400 is a low estimate of credit hours lost, and it could be as much as twice that.

Some might think that the fee is punitive, and it can certainly be considered that way. It's not a way to milk more money from students, and, in fact, it is hoped that money coming in from pink cards will actually go down. One of the points of the fee is to make students consider whether they really need to make that change. Is it really worth it? It makes students ask themselves, "Are all my courses in order? Because that late fee is really going hurt." But look at it from another perspective. Every course you take has an intrinsic cost in materials, manpower and time, and the University eats the cost of adds after the deadline. That state funding would have gone to hiring teachers, improving classrooms and other academic needs. So every single UNM student suffers because of that late add.

With the looming threat of statewide budget cuts to education, we need those credits to count; we need the students to step up and take care of their registration on time. Spring registration is open Dec. 15 for all students, and the earliest deadline isn't until Jan. 23.

Luke Shipers

UNM staff