College of Southern Nevada students face big changes

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Here it is not even spring break yet and the catalog listing next semester’s classes at the College of Southern Nevada is coming out this week.

Then, on May 1, early registration starts.

And the next thing you know, wham, your payment’s due on June 1.

Whoa. Wait. Back up.

Payment for the fall semester is due June 1?

Yes. The deadline is 2½ months earlier than it used to be, and for good reason.

The college’s officials are trying to avoid another apocalypse.

You see, it used to be that CSN, the largest college by far in Nevada, would allow students to pay up until right before classes started at the end of August.

Students who hadn’t paid by the deadline were automatically kicked out of those classes. That opened up slots in the classes, which yet more students rushed to fill.

When we say “rushed to fill,” we’re not exaggerating.

Usually, a few hundred students would wait in line early on the morning after the purge date, hoping to add a critical biology or math class that had been full. Budget cuts had made it impossible to offer more classes for the students.

CSN has more than 40,000 students, and nearly every one of them has to, at some point, take an intro biology and math class. Those classes are sometimes very difficult to get into.

To make it easier, college officials recommended that students do their registration online, which saved them from waiting in line all morning.

Except, last semester, this led to disaster.

The entire higher education system recently had switched to a new computer registration system.

When there were 50,000 log-in attempts the next morning trying to get into those newly opened spots?

“It crashed the system. It not only crashed us, it crashed the entire system,” said Pat Zozaya, the college’s registrar.

“We were not very popular. We could not let that happen again.”

The system demanded changes, so that is what’s coming.

Students who do not pay for the classes they’ve registered for by June 1 will be purged.

Students who register after June 1 — including newly minted high school graduates — will be required to pay for their classes by midnight on the day they register. If they do not, they will be purged.

Students who depend on financial aid to pay for their classes will get a break. They won’t be purged if their financial aid applications are pending.

“We want to make sure students who have financial aid don’t get purged from the system,” said Matt Sanchez, the director of financial aid at CSN.

But those students had better get their applications in by May 30 at the latest, the college officials say. That includes current high school students who plan on attending CSN after they graduate. If the application isn’t in, and the students don’t pay, they will be purged.

Chemene Crawford, the interim vice president for student affairs, said students can do their financial aid applications much earlier than that. As early as January. But most do not.

“Many of our students wait, for some reason, until late spring or early summer,” she said.

That is no longer a good idea.

“We just can’t hold their hands like we used to,” she said.

There are other changes, as well.

The higher education system recently declared that students without a high school diploma or its equivalent no longer can be admitted to the state’s community colleges. Students who score high enough on placement tests can get by that requirement.

The federal government also declared that students without a high school diploma or its equivalent no longer can receive financial aid. Students already in the system can continue receiving the aid, but not if they change majors after July 1.

College officials said they are working hard to notify students of the impending changes.

They sent an alert on Tuesday noting the changes. They plan on working with campus groups, too.

But they acknowledge that it is probably inevitable that some students will not get the message. That some students will miss the deadline and that some of them will blame the college. Will blame them.

“It’s all part of the job,” Crawford said.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal .com or 702-383-0307.