Kailey Hart has had to be a little more frugal this semester.
Although she works part-time at PetSmart and has some leftover funds from summer, without her Bright Futures scholarship, it’s not enough to cover the necessities like rent, food and gas.
Hart, a 20-year-old UF zoology junior, hasn’t lost her scholarship, but she’s one of hundreds of students who have seen a delay in their financial aid disbursement as UF works to switch over to a new system.
“Basically I've done everything right on my end,” she said, “and I still have to deal with complications, and that sucks.”
UF’s Office for Student Financial Affairs is converting hundreds of thousands of records and moving delivery of services into a new system called Compass, Campus-wide Modernization Program to Advance Student Services, a UF spokesperson Steve Orlando wrote in an email. In the meantime, the office has provided about 370 students with interim grants, totaling more than $550,000 to help with their expenses while they wait for their full financial aid to disburse.
“The staff is working as fast as they can to get students their disbursements,” Orlando said.
Not all of the delays were caused by the switch to the new system, some of them were the result of federal aid money arriving late, he said.
This time last year, only about 32 students were given interim grants, totaling $50,000, he said. The grants act as an advance on a student’s financial aid. When students receive their actual financial aid disbursement, UF will subtract the interim grant from the total.
The old system, ISIS, the Integrated Student Information System, dates back to the 1990s and ran on the UF Mainframe, which is more than 40 years old. UF Mainframe runs on old technology that limits UF’s ability to respond to innovative academic offerings and to enhance the student experience, Orlando said. The new system costs $23 million.
The office is focused on responding to the needs of students and the campus community with emphasis on delivering aid to students as quickly as possible, Orlando said.
The staff has been challenged because it is taking time to get used to the new setup, Orlando said. In addition, the staff has to work in two systems at the same time until the implementation is completed, which will be in December.
“We have worked hard to reduce the impact on students with the interim grants,” Orlando said.
Contact McKenna Beery at mbeery@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @mckennabeery
