University of Virginia – Process Simplification
Transcript Issuance Team
Final Report – September 1998

Background and Approach to Work

During the spring 1998, the Student Enrollment Services Process Owners Group formed a team to study the University’s process for managing the issuance of transcripts. Specifically, the group was charged with the following tasks:

The purpose of the transcript issuance team is to evaluate the current transcript payment process with the goal of simplifying the process for all students (undergraduate, graduates, continuing education), alumni, and administrative offices involved in administering the fees.

The team should consider the possibility of replacing individual fees and/or including other "credentialing" fees (e.g., OCPP Recommendations File). The team’s initial focus should be on the payment process. Once this evaluation is complete, a second phase of the team’s work could be on the transcript request process.

Rebecca Leonard, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at the McIntire School of Commerce, served as team leader. Other team members include: Melody Bianchetto, Director, Budget Office; Scott Caudill, graduate student, McIntire School, Karen Knierim, Associate Director, Office of Career Planning and Placement; Robert LeHeup, Assistant Registrar, Registrar’s Office; Christina Morell, Process Simplification Manager, Office of the VP for Management and Budget; Frank Papovich, Assistant Dean, College of Arts and Sciences; and Roseann Parks, Director, Charlottesville Regional Center, Division of Continuing Education.

Given the scope of the mission, the team adhered to a fairly straightforward approach in its assessment of the process. The team leader conducted several preliminary meetings with members of the Registrar’s Office and the Budget Office. Once background information was gathered and compiled, it was sent to the team members for review. The team met to review the issue, identify the problems, discuss alternative solutions, and reach a final recommendation.

Review of the Transcript Issuance Process and General Findings

In its analysis of the transcript issuance process, the team studied the following issues described in detail in the appropriate appendices:

How to Obtain a Transcript – Appendix I

  • Current Transcript Issuance Process – Appendix II
  • Collection of Fees and Current Fee Structure – Appendix III and IV
  • Survey of Other Colleges and Universities – Appendix V
  • “Quick” Survey of Current Students – Appendix VI

Based on the data collected, the team found that the University is spending unnecessary time and resources in the billing and collection of fees related to transcript requests. For example, five different employees in the Registrar’s Office spend up to a total of twenty cumulative hours per week on billing, mailing bills, and writing refund checks. Accordingly, team members agreed that current billing procedures for transcripts should change and that recommendations considered for improving the transcript issuance process should focus on eliminating this practice. The Registrar’s Office also believes that the current system creates a negative public relations image for the University as many alumni and students expect the University to provide this service at no cost.

Analysis

Although the team evaluated several alternatives (see Appendix VII), three options were considered most seriously. The first is to require requestors to pay for transcripts in advance either through cash check, Cavalier Advantage, or by credit card. The Office of Career Planning and Placement uses a similar process for the Credential Services they provide. Currently, the Registrar’s Office does not accept payment by credit card or Cavalier Advantage. These services would require additional financial resources (purchasing equipment for the Cavalier Advantage program and transaction charges assessed on credit card purchases) and may require additional time from staff members for processing. However, based on experience, the Registrar’s Office believes that instituting a policy requiring payment in advance would reduce customer satisfaction. Requiring payment in advance would eliminate the need for billing, but enforcing 100% pre-payment may not be practical. Transcript requests differ from regular commercial transactions in that they can only be obtained from the University and serve as the student's only official proof of enrollment or graduation. Transcripts are more akin to other official records, such as medical files or payroll records, than to other auxiliary services. Students and alumni request transcripts for needs such as graduate school applications, employment verifications, pay increases, and teaching re-certifications. The Registrar’s Office believes that the importance of such requests far outweighs the importance of collecting a fee in advance.

Although the notion of eliminating the fee is not part of the team’s charge, a second option is to abolish the fee entirely. This would completely eliminate problems associated with the collection of the fee and likely would create positive relations with students and alumni. While the volume of transcripts requested could go up in the short term, it is believed that increases in cost would be minimal and that the number of requests would level off in the long-term. The present system does, for the most part, result in customers paying for what they use, and any change to this might mean that current students would be subsidizing alumni and heavy users. The difficulty of the abolishment of the fee is obviously the loss of $180,000 in revenue. To implement this option, it must be determined which department’s expenditure budget could also be reduced by $180,000.

Lastly, the team discussed the option of replacing the usage fee with a per semester fee. If a fee is used (which would require approval from the General Assembly[1]) it should be applied to all students, both undergraduates and graduates. Thus, tying the fee with a summer orientation does not seem equitable. Currently, Continuing Education students pay no mandatory student fees and it may be difficult to add this to their current payments given the number of students and variety of credit hours completed.[2] Again, the use of a fee should not result in certain students subsidizing other students; but this may not be entirely possible.

Recommendations

The team has determined that the current billing of transcript fees from the Registrar’s Office can be simplified. Below are the team’s recommendations, in the order of preference, on how to change the current process.

  • Ideally, the team recommends that the University eliminate the fee and search for ways to reduce expenditures in order to absorb this lost revenue. Cost saving opportunities might be found, such as reducing the personnel in the Registrar’s Office.
  • The team recommends that if the above is not possible, the University should submit an amendment to the General Assembly to request an increase in the mandatory E&G fee (which it is assumed would exclude DCE and Summer Session students). In the request, it must be noted that the increased cost to the student will be offset by the elimination of the usage fee currently in place. A mandatory fee would be applied to all undergraduate and graduate students on a $5.00 per semester basis. A limit would not be placed on the number of transcripts students could request. Based on 1997 fall headcount enrollment figures, the University would collect $181,310[3] by replacing the usage fee with a mandatory transcript fee.
  • If the University is unsuccessful at receiving a special exemption to transfer this fee, it is recommended that the Registrar’s Office implement a process of payment in advance. In order to better serve constituents needing transcripts urgently or not having cash, the Office should be set up to accept credit cards and Cavalier Advantage. These two options likely would result in gained efficiencies in the processing of payments. To accommodate additional equipment needs and the credit card transaction costs, the usage fee may need to be increased if this option were implemented. However, increased revenue fees from better collection may provide the resources needed to purchase additional equipment.

Anticipated Benefits

The team believes that the above recommendations would result in the elimination of an outdated billing process and significantly enhance and improve the transcript issuance process for employees, students, and alumni. If recommendation one or two above were implemented, the Registrar's Office would also benefit from freeing up staff time currently spent managing the transcript fee for other duties. For example, implementation of an on-line registration system and summer orientation process will require a significant commitment from Office staff. Also, elimination of the fee would provide the opportunity to develop an on-line transcript request system, which would give students and alumni another, even quicker means to order transcripts.

Appendix I

How to Get a Transcript

(Registrar's Office Home Page)

Transcripts may be obtained at the Office of the University Registrar in Carruthers Hall for a fee of $3 per copy. Transcripts can be printed and given to you while you wait. Requests cannot be taken over the telephone or via E-mail. Transcript request forms may be completed at the various deans' offices around Grounds and left with the correct payment; our office courier will pick them up and bring them to the office.

Transcripts cannot be produced for anyone whose record has been blocked by the Bursar's Office. If you choose to send a request by mail, write to: UVA Registrar's Office, PO Box 9009, CharlottesvilleVA22906-9009. Be sure to include your full name and address, your student I.D. (social security number), the complete mailing address to where the transcript should be sent, and your signature. The charge is $3 per copy; make checks payable to University of Virginia.

Transcript orders can be taken via facsimile, but we do bill an additional $5 fee for all incoming faxes as well as for all outgoing faxes. Faxes sent outside North America are billed at $15. If we send you a copy of your transcript via fax, it will not be an official copy. Our fax number is 804/924-4156. We will process the order and send a bill for the transcript and fax fees to the address you give in your request.

Transcript orders are usually processed within one to two working days. For more information, please call 804/924-4121.

Appendix II

Current Transcript Issuance and Billing Process:

(Bob LeHeup, Associate Registrar)

Transcript requests are received in three different ways: in person, by mail, and via fax. Requests made in person are usually in the form of a completed request form, and payment is almost always made at the same time. If payment is not made—when the cash register is closed or the student does not have any money or we do not have correct change—we write out a bill and give it to the student (keeping a copy for ourselves).

Requests sent by mail have proper payment about 80% of the time. The ones that do not and the ones received by fax (which can never have payment included, since we do not accept credit cards) have bills prepared programmatically as part of the “typing up” of the mail. We type requests into a computer program, which produces address inserts that fit in a window envelope, as well as a file copy for our records. As needed, a bill or refund slip is also produced.

If the student has paid too much, we prepare and mail a refund check. We write checks as least once a week. Once a month, we balance the refund account, make a deposit from our departmental account to cover the amount of checks written in that month, and write off checks still not cashed after one year.

If too little is paid, we issue a bill. Bills are sent on an irregular schedule, but at least once a month. Photocopies are made for our files of all the bills, and the originals mailed to the students. As payment is received, we pull the photocopies from our files and discard them. At the end of one month, the remaining file copies are separated into two piles: less than $10 and $10 or greater. The smaller bill copies are mailed to the students as a second notice, but we do not continue to keep a copy in the files. (If these smaller bills are never paid, there is nothing we do about it, and no way to prevent additional orders from being processed.) The $10 and higher bills are copied again, the second notice mailed to the student, and a copy retained in our files.

At the end of the second month, a third billing is made. Copies are made of all outstanding bills for the files, and a third notice is sent to the students. If bills remain unpaid at the end of the third month, we pull the original request from our transcript request files to place in a special “referred accounts” file. We then type the necessary information into ISIS so that the bill is placed on the student’s account with the Bursar and a financial hold is put in place.

If a deposited check does not clear, the Bursar’s Office assumes responsibility for making the collection, and adds a $20 bad check fee. In the Registrar’s Office, we will see that the student now has a financial hold on their record, but that may not always prevent us from accepting another check if the student makes a new request by mail (since checks are deposited before the order is processed). We do get lengthy bad check reports, which we merely file away.

On a daily basis, we make a deposit to our accounts at Wachovia Bank. We have separate accounts for transcripts, postage (into which we put fax fees), diplomas, I.D. cards, and Pavilion VIII fees. We daily call in a report to a deposit management firm and bring the deposit to the Bursar’s Office, where it is held until the armored courier arrives to take it to the bank. Monthly, we review the financial reports we receive from Accounting Operations and verify them against our daily deposit reports. If a student makes payment directly to the Bursar’s Office, which can happen if they owe additional money to the University, we will get an IDT from the Bursar.

Transcript Volume

(Bob LeHeup, Associate Registrar)

  • In 1997, we produced approximately 75,000 transcripts, taking in $181,135, an insignificant portion of the University’s revenue. Approximately 10-15,000 of those transcripts are issued at the request of the school or for scholarship renewal at no charge.
  • We billed approximately $22,800 (including billing for faxes)
  • In payment of those bills, we received approximately $14,000 (estimating receipt of $3000 for faxes, which is tallied combined with postage received for diploma mailing)
  • Many bills go unpaid because students know we can’t do much about it—we refer unpaid bills to the Bursar’s Office only for $10 or more, and only after we have billed three times
  • We wrote 707 refund checks, for a total of $2100, an average of $3 per check and 59 checks written per month
  • We spent over $1000 just in postage to mail bills and refund checks

Appendix III

Collection of Fees

(Jay Scott/Melody Bianchetto, Director of the Budget Office)

The University has two types of fees: mandatory, which every student must pay, and for service, which are paid by a student when a particular service is rendered. Mandatory fees are either categorized as educational and general (for example, fees to support intramural recreational facilities or student computer labs and support) or as auxiliary (for example, student transportation at University Transit and student programming at University Union). See attached “Detail of Required Fees” for specifics. Presently, mandatory fees for in-state and out-of-state students are exactly the same. The General Assembly has frozen in-state undergraduate tuition and E&G mandatory fees since 1995-96. One exemption from the freeze, requested as a part of a Unified Amendment from all institutions of higher education, was granted by the General Assembly in the 1998 session allowing all institutions of higher education to add a technology fee.

Currently the $3 transcript fee is a for-service fee, that is, it is paid when the service is rendered. If you eliminate a for-service fee, the revenue impact of losing that fee must be recovered by either increasing another revenue (ie., mandatory fees or tuition) or reducing an expenditure budget. For example, the Library decided to change its fee collection policy. Under the old policy the University was received about $100,000 in revenues that were fed back into the budget. Under the new policy, only about $25,000 in library fines were generated. Somewhere, some expenditure budget must make up that revenue loss. The University’s revenue budget equals the expenditure budget – if one side decreases, the other side must also decrease. Therefore, the question is how to eliminate the fee but not the revenue.

One option discussed in eliminating the for-service fee without eliminating the revenue would be to increase mandatory E&G fees or tuition to cover the cost of issuing transcripts. The key barrier to this is the current freeze on increasing tuition and E&G fees for in-state undergraduate students.