Dropping Cash

Missing scholarships reveal areas of disorganization.

When someone loses $20 from his or her pocket, it is assumed that person might be a little perturbed – $20 is a week’s worth of breakfast sandwiches or bagels and coffee. But what’s worse is that you can’t blame anyone but yourself for being just a little too careless, or at least peg it on an intangible case of bad luck.

Now, imagine a person were carrying an envelope with enough money to fund eight to 10 students’ college educations – not the type of cash anyone would hastily stuff in a pocket. And, if that envelope went missing, it’s hopeful someone would own up to the mistake, as the availability of the funds determines some students’ continued education, and make what was wrong, right.

This assumption, however, is clearly a romanticized thought.

As reported by Brian Dzenis in this week’s edition of The Temple News, eight to 10 Temple students who typically receive funds from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation were surprised to learn that when March 9 – a tuition payment due date – rolled around, no dollar amounts were deducted from their tuition statements.
Somehow, the money has been lost in transit between NMSC and Student Financial Services. What’s worse, even, is that SFS didn’t even know about the mishap until two months after the checks were to be in Temple’s hands. NMSC says it will issue a stop payment if the university notifies the scholarship corporation it has not received the checks and another round of checks will be issued the following month.

The ball then, is clearly in Temple’s court, and The Temple News urges the university to step up and take responsibility. It’s not a matter of accepting the blame; it’s a matter of moving forward to correctly align the dollar signs in a timely manner for students who have already done their parts by working diligently to earn the scholarships in the first place.

After all, the student is the solution result of this equation. It takes a team of people to write the checks and another team of people to apply the checks to the students’ tuition bills. Perhaps the checks were incorrectly issued, but that kind of money doesn’t just disappear. Disorganization – a common system among a multitude of offices at Temple – is certainly not the name of the game, and though The Temple News knows things are not always easy with multi-step processes, we have three words of advice: Make it better.