UW-Madison has extended its tuition refund deadline by one week in response to the increasing pressures of COVID-19 on enrolled students.
Sept. 11 was the preliminary withdrawal deadline for students looking to receive full tuition reimbursements this semester. However, the implementation of a two-week remote instruction period and quarantine mandates for two residence halls starting Sept. 9 did not provide much time for Badger families to consider students’ options before the initial refund deadline.
Those changes to campus proceedings and students’ feelings toward a Covid-ridden semester may have influenced recent inspiration to withdraw for the remainder of the Fall 2020 semester. On Monday, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Laurent Heller said there had been a relative increase in reimbursement extension requests following the online transition. Consequently, UW-Madison pushed the tuition reimbursement deadline to Sept. 18.
“We understand these are difficult times for students and families as they evaluate rapidly changing circumstances during the pandemic,” stated registrar Scott Owczarek in a UW-Madison news release. “To help reduce some pressure they’re feeling, we’ve provided some flexibility in the timeline for making important decisions about this semester.”
Chancellor Rebecca Blank and other university leaders reiterated the claim that students should be allowed to withdraw at this time without financial burden.
“For those who feel that they want to withdraw, we want to allow them to withdraw and get their tuition back… We clearly don’t want to make that hard for them,” Blank said at a recent media briefing.
Blank’s statement and the deadline extension come after the university’s reopening plan led students and staff — most notably the Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA) — to allege the UW would only keep campus open long enough to secure profit from tuition before transitioning to online courses.
“Experts in our community have been begging for instruction to go fully online. How long do you think @UWMadison and @BeckyBlank will hold out?” the TAA said in a tweet addressing UW-Madison’s initial time frame for campus activity and refund deadlines. “The countdown to the tuition refund deadline has begun.”
Students were already given the ability to withdraw from one or more courses without the select course(s) being included on future transcripts. That deadline had previously been extended from Sept. 9 to Sept. 11.
Students can also get 50 percent tuition refunds by Sept. 25 if the course or courses dropped call for adjusted tuition rates.
UW-Madison urges students to reach out to their respective academic dean’s office if they have withdrawn — or have newfound intentions of withdrawing — since the preliminary Sept. 11 deadline.
Many students who are suiting up to stay in Madison for the remainder of the semester would like their financial concerns to be addressed as well.
“UW-Madison should not by any means be entitled to the fees they've charged students for this semester for services they have extremely limited or no access to,” says third year student Breon Newble in a petition addressed to Chancellor Blank. “The purpose of this petition is to urge university officials to return some, if not ALL, of the nearly $750.00 they've charged students for the lackluster Fall 2020 semester.”
The petition has garnered 860 signatures thus far.
