The Registrar Office Permanent Staff are very Rude to Students
When students go to speak about their class schedules, graduation requirements, or transfer details, the registrar's permanent staff are rude. The email communications from the staff are short, uninformative, unorganized, etc., and when a student asks for clarification, the response is unnecessarily hostile and still unhelpful.
Direct communications are no better. However, if you complain or ask to speak to anyone who is higher in rank, you find out that their mother is their direct boss, and therefore your complaint falls on deaf ears.
If the registrar does not wish to interact with students, my suggestion is to go completely electronic with all processes and eliminate the need to interact. What is the point in interacting with the registrar if they do not wish to answer questions and, then, disrespect the students for which they are intended to serve?
Kathryn
shared this idea
UPDATE:
USG recently met with the registrar’s office. They are continuing to address this concern in new ways besides the survey. If you disagree or agree please let us know down in the comments or by visiting USG office hours.
Love,
USG
___________________________________
After the joint focus group between USG, students, and the registrar, we have come up with some solutions:
1) The registrar is developing a survey that will be sent to all students who come into the office for assistance in order to get feedback on whether they completed their job effectively and to the satisfaction of students.
2) The registrar has had two vacant positions recently, putting them slightly behind in processing. Both of these positions should be filled by the end of the month so that they can better address students’ needs.
This is an ongoing process so please continue to leave comments of your experiences with the Registrar’s Office below (good or bad).
Love,
USG
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Anonymous
commented
This is so true. They are rude and stress me out. I go to Mines I don’t need more stress.
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Anonymous
commented
From a graduate student perspective- the registrar only begins reviewing petitions for residency (in-state tuition) at the beginning of the semester, which makes it VERY stressful for students (and presumably puts a lot of pressure on the registrar). There must be a more efficient way to process these petitions.
It is NOT fair to students to be stressed about having to potentially pay thousands of dollars depending on whether or not their petition is approved. Myself (and several of my peers) did not hear back until census day.
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Anonymous
commented
The Registrar's office sucks, although there has been significant improvement over the last 3 years. How about that time when the Veterans Affairs Rep left her position and they didn't tell anyone... so all the Veterans had no idea who to talk to about getting their education certifications done... and they couldn't talk to anyone about who to talk to because it was over winter break when no one was at school... so a bunch of people got their benefits late because they couldn't be certified in a timely fashion. Big Blue strikes again.
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Anonymous
commented
I'm sorry to hear that but I'm surprised because I've never had any poor interactions with the Registrars Office staff and I'm in there quite often for help with graduation requirements. Every time I've been in there they are extremely willing to help (assuming there is no line, which is reasonable for any place that is offering a service, coming from someone who's worked at a grocery store and other customer service environments). Maybe it's an issue with the golden rule? (if you go into a place with a bad attitude then people are never as willing to help but if you're nice and start with "Hi, how's your day going?" instead of "I need ___" you will have much better success). From what I've seen, it seems like the Registrar's is like the police that just enforce the rules, not make them. At a grocery store, you don't get mad at the cashier for a wrong price ringing up. So you can't get mad at any one office for enforcing rules that they don't make. Maybe this is just school preparing you for rules, policies, and deadlines that will happen for the rest of your life. I don't know any of this for a fact but I just want to shed light onto the positive experiences I (and hopefully many more students) have had.
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Anonymous
commented
Agreed, I have also had very useless interactions with the registrar. Often I'll ask a question about a prereq, and I am given incorrect information, and I ended up not taking a class this semester because the registrar was not updated on prereqs.
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Matt
commented
I agree. My experience is that there is often a "not my problem" attitude and requests are "punted" just to get on to the next person rather than assisting to help resolve the issue.
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Kathryn
commented
Tim - You're correct, the students are not the problem. Endless poor experiences with staff though.
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Tim
commented
while i concur with this general statement, I think it would be helpful to note that my interactions with the student workers has been reasonable, there is a specific person, whom I prefer not to mention in a public forum who is the Assistant Registrar who may be better suited to a job that does not involve student interaction