Barack Obama said, “A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, “Huh. It works. It makes sense.”
Apparently, it came as a rude shock when students, especially the freshers, learnt that it was now history to have their school fees paid twice in the renowned 60/40 payment format. For many, this distorted their seemingly seamless plan to have their school fees paid alongside other necessary payment that comes with registration on campus.
Speaking to one, he said that he had every of his expenses budgeted, such that there was no spill-out. Everything was just trimmed to the demands of the school. But upon getting to the school and discovering that payment format of 60/40 was no longer existential in the school, it disrupted his budget, coercing him to make dire late-minute changes, such that the money earmarked for accommodation had to be deployed to the payment of school fees. Here he was, with no money for accommodation, he had no other option but to keep squatting from one room to the other with people he knew not from Adam.
That is just one out of many stranded scenarios caused by the sudden and unforeseen legislation on school fees payment format. Students have, no doubt, been left to scamper for resorts to bail them out unscathed from the legislation. This is not to gloss over the many cases of withdrawal and detour such legislation have weighed on potential leaders of our nation’s resources.
Legislations are necessary for effective running of an administration or a campaign. It was legislation that brought about the 60/40 payment format that was comfy to all and sundry in the first place. It will definitely be a legislation that would have it changed as well. The people who make this legislation apparently have their perspective, sentiments and premises to it, but the fact is: at the centre of this legislation are the people it affects, as such; if any is to be made, the people it is meant for is kernel to its implementation. In other words, looking out for how it affects them against the ideal result such legislation had been envisaged to bring is preponderant.
Customarily, freshers have variedly allied financial obligations to the school aside school fees payment. These students, bluntly, in comparison with returning students have more bills on their table. If there were to be students whose burden should be streamlined, they are the ones. To make their burden worse in the present economic “buoyancy” of the country is absolutely going to come with resistance such as what we are seeing from their expressed displeasure and discomfort with the new payment demands.
Away from them a bit, even the returning students yet have issues with the payment structure for the session. Though theirs does not have to do with the 60/40 payment format, but does hold water in rational evaluation. Their grouse is hinged on the protracted unavailability of the previous session result to inform and abet a seamless registration for the new semester. It is common knowledge that after school fees is paid for, before its proof-in-paper could be printed out for the necessary procedures to be carried out on it, one would need to register one’s courses for the semester. But such is being bottlenecked by the unavailability of previous results to aid one’s choices of course registration in the light of the possibilities of carry-over courses. It is considered foolhardy and risky to go ahead and register for courses without seeing the required semester result to inform and complete one’s choice of courses for the new semester since semesters are mutually exclusive to one another.
In all, the need for a reappraisal as regards school fees payment can never be more cogent than this. For the freshers, it is a matter of being considerate to their plight of being caught unprepared for the sudden change in payment format, made worse by other unavoidable financial obligations they have to the school in their course to becoming bona fide students of the school. For the returning students, it is a matter of the school being patient with them in paying their school fees as much as the school appeals them to be patient with it in releasing their results.
