Are payment cards a good deal or a raw deal for College students?

According to this article the payment cards are not a good deal. There is a captive audience and are being gouged by the financial institutions and the Colleges are benefiting from this deal. It doesn't help that the payment cards are required for dispersement of financial aid.


Colleges' bank deals saddle students with big fees - Houston Chronicle

This system, issuing 'special' account debit cards is used in Texas for UI benefits. The "deal" is that you may make TWO debit transactions, without suffering any "transaction fees", for every deposit. The UI benfits are deposited by the state once every two weeks, so you can make only two, feeless withdrawls, to get all of your allotted money. The smart person makes ONE withdrawl of the entire balance, every two weeks, and either keeps the cash or puts it into a reasonable no fee (or interest bearing) bank account to use. Morons, suffer greatly by using that state issued debit card many times per deposit incurring lots of bank fees.

sounds like a rip.

I have a Mastercard debit card through HigherOne that is utilized for the disbursement of my financial aid (a grant). I don't pay any fees unless I somehow manage to overdraw on the card. I can deposit money onto the card through paypal, my normal bank (Chase), or through the HigherOne website, should I so choose (but I don't). I could choose direct deposit, which adds a day or two, but I like keeping my financial aid separate.

If you take the time to learn how to manage your money, there's really nothing hard about using the newer disbursement system. Every system has its flaws, but at the end of the day, financial aid is a favor awarded to students. Beggars shouldn't be choosers.

tessaesque said:

If you take the time to learn how to manage your money, there's really nothing hard about using the newer disbursement system. Every system has its flaws, but at the end of the day, financial aid is a favor awarded to students. Beggars shouldn't be choosers.

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IT is true that beggars cannot be choosers but then again the beggar shouldn't have to deal with a middleman who is trying to siphon off what the beggar does receive and also who is being very creative in making as many ways as possible to siphon off as much as possible.

Shadow Serious said:

IT is true that beggars cannot be choosers but then again the beggar shouldn't have to deal with a middleman who is trying to siphon off what the beggar does receive and also who is being very creative in making as many ways as possible to siphon off as much as possible.

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If you read and understand the terms you don't have to worry about anybody siphoning off money. :shrug:

tessaesque said:

I have a Mastercard debit card through HigherOne that is utilized for the disbursement of my financial aid (a grant). I don't pay any fees unless I somehow manage to overdraw on the card. I can deposit money onto the card through paypal, my normal bank (Chase), or through the HigherOne website, should I so choose (but I don't). I could choose direct deposit, which adds a day or two, but I like keeping my financial aid separate.

If you take the time to learn how to manage your money, there's really nothing hard about using the newer disbursement system. Every system has its flaws, but at the end of the day, financial aid is a favor awarded to students. Beggars shouldn't be choosers.

Click to expand...

I don't understand the justification for any college using this. It says that the cards are cheaper and faster for them...I dunno in what way, but my aid has always been just credited toward tuition, then the leftover direct deposited into the bank on the day tuition is due, no cards or mobster middle men involved. I don't see why that's so difficult. Financial aid is not a favor to most either, when almost all of it for undergrads is loans and work-study, at least at non top 25 schools. Calling them beggars is insulting when they have to pay it back, with no guarantee of return on investment. It's soon going to be where the colleges will be the beggars. Most of them these days simply couldn't exist without financial aid.

It's a crappy deal. I went straight to direct deposit and get upset at financial aid disbursements taking longer for something that didn't used to take that long.

tessaesque said:

If you read and understand the terms you don't have to worry about anybody siphoning off money. :shrug:

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The students should not have to deal with this read what wolv67 said and notice the part I emboldened.:

wolv67 said:

I don't understand the justification for any college using this. It says that the cards are cheaper and faster for them...I dunno in what way, but my aid has always been just credited toward tuition, then the leftover direct deposited into the bank on the day tuition is due, no cards or mobster middle men involved. I don't see why that's so difficult. Financial aid is not a favor to most either, when almost all of it for undergrads is loans and work-study, at least at non top 25 schools. Calling them beggars is insulting when they have to pay it back, with no guarantee of return on investment. It's soon going to be where the colleges will be the beggars. Most of them these days simply couldn't exist without financial aid.

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And since this is being forced on the students by the Universities the consequences of having it go thru these middle man are noted by Fiddytree:

Fiddytree said:

It's a crappy deal. I went straight to direct deposit and get upset at financial aid disbursements taking longer for something that didn't used to take that long.

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Shadow Serious said:

The students should not have to deal with this read what wolv67 said and notice the part I emboldened.:



And since this is being forced on the students by the Universities the consequences of having it go thru these middle man are noted by Fiddytree:

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The students shouldn't be obligated to understand a legally binding contract they're entering into? Seriously?

That is everything that is wrong with modern society, right there.

We can lobby for individual universities to remove the card systems, however unsuccessful those attempts may be. I don't find the process abhorrent to use the card or to fill out information to have the funds direct-deposited instead. It seems silly to have direct-deposits take longer than in years past because of a new piece of plastic that few students in my university are openly using. I just find it a meaningless device that provides no efficiency and duplicates services provided by the student's own preferred bank. There was a problem too where there were few ATMs that were Higher One accessible in the whole state of North Dakota without transaction fees, so the university recommended that everyone place their purchases on the "credit" option and sign. It was a stupid idea, but there you go.

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[quote="wolv67]I don't understand the justification for any college using this. It says that the cards are cheaper and faster for them...I dunno in what way, but my aid has always been just credited toward tuition, then the leftover direct deposited into the bank on the day tuition is due, no cards or mobster middle men involved. I don't see why that's so difficult.[/quote]

i agree.

I will suggest, however, that I do not quite know the working environment for the financial aid departments throughout the country. Perhaps there are internal studies or incidental moments where a worker in these departments can attest to the increased efficiency of the process through these cards. Indeed, the financial aid department at my university had many problems in the past. For my own instance, I had an occasion where a refund was given to me. I made numerous attempts to make sure that those refunds were indeed legitimate and that I could make use of them (I had an aged laptop at the time). They assured me for numerous times over a period of 2-3 weeks. I then shortly after the third week or so had received notice that they wanted that money back. So I had to write a check for given them that money after being told it did not need to be sent back.