Were you enrolled in a for profit college? If not, your cynicism seems misplaced.
What if a student was in a car accident and missed a few classes because they were in the hospital? The school should just assume they withdrew? How is that fair? IMO, that would be more egregious.
I still don’t understand your hostility towards this school when the onus was on you to withdraw. And again, I think that if you actually talked to the school and explained your circumstances, you could get this all cleared up quickly. I don’t know any admins who would not be sympathetic to the death of a parent at such a young age.
You seem to be making the assumption that everyone on this board is from an upper income family with college educated parents. You and your friends aren’t the first low income students to hit a college campus.
There could be several reasons why colleges don’t automatically drop students who miss classes. Students signed a registration form. That, not surprisingly, makes colleges think the student has plans to attend. Federal and state aid is tied to the number of credits students are enrolled in, so if students are dropped they lose the aid. International students who drop below a certain # of credits can lose their VISA and have to leave the country.
If colleges guess wrong and drop a student who didn’t want to be dropped that can cause problems too. Students who need the class to stay on track to graduate may have problems getting enough aid to finish their degree. A class that has a limited number of seats/equipment can’t absorb more than that because the college added students to “replace” students who were just absent a day or two. Just because it’s a policy that would benefit you it doesn’t mean it’s a good policy for everyone.
It’s not surprising that a bill you owe might show up on your credit report. I think most debts end up on those reports. Neither of these policies are the school trying to get you. You made a mistake when you were ~20. There’s nothing wrong with that. Go find the people on campus who can help you. But I wouldn’t approach them like they’re out to get you. If it’s a public college they didn’t make the rules, but they can help you navigate them.
Between me and my son, my family has a vast experience of screwing up at numerous colleges, so I want to be sympathetic to you, @nontraditional3. But you’re making it difficult.
The world does not revolve around you and your desires. Your idea that professors should drop students if they don’t come to class would make problems for students who don’t go to class but nevertheless manage to pass the classes (hmmm who could that be I have no idea cough) and also the many professors who do not check attendance in their classes and would have no idea who wasn’t showing up.
It’s good that you want to go back to school and get your degree. Been there, done that, wish you the best. You’ll have a better college experience, and for that matter a better life, if you realize that other people have different needs and motivations than you do, and you don’t assume that everything that causes you problems is a sinister plot.
I know a student working full time and taking a course at a time to complete her BA. Her company is paying for her degree (yes, she’s lucky). Which means that she pays for each course upfront when she enrolls, and gets paid back when she shows her transcript- either an A or a B. There are a couple of courses where she was pretty much a no-show, particularly at the beginning of the semester, because the courses were repeats of stuff she was doing every single day at work. “Introductory Accounting”- she knew the first month of the syllabus cold, and felt her time was better used working overtime and getting some extra cash. Should she have been dropped for not showing up? Her commuter college (also designed for low income and first Gen students) stated clearly that the only way to drop a class was to drop a class. Which worked for her- she paid upfront, took the midterm and the final, went to classes when she could, got her A, and her company sent her a check for her tuition.
Your situation is not the only one that a policy has to accommodate. There are adult learners who work in law enforcement who need a BA to advance in their department- but they already know the material in a few of their courses because they ALREADY understand criminology and sociopathic behavior because they work as a correctional officer every single day. They should get dropped automatically for not showing up?
Get out of your own head, get over to the bursar’s office, and get that charge cleared from your account; then hightail it over to the registrar and get the F’s changed to W’s. What are you waiting for?