How College Billing Works

College Bills: Just like any other bill you receive, except if you don't pay it your classes get canceled.

Why you need to know this: This will help you pay your bills on time and also encourage snide remarks the next time you pay your bill.

College bills are a subset of "junk mail" that actually is important and shouldn't be thrown out, yet you'd really love to do just that. There are several tactics that college love to do. First is to wait until the last minute to actually let you see your bill. This is usually done 2 weeks or less to when it is due. This lets colleges save money by only employing "financial assistants" only during those 2 weeks. They know the line will be extremely long those days and will keep the employees busy. Plus, the administration LOVES to walk by during those 2 weeks and laugh at all the "stupid students" that are giving up 3 hours of their time to wait in line and give the shitty administration a good lump of their hard earned cash.

Another way they work is by sending you several updated bills. Several weeks after you paid for your next quarter towards that liberal arts degree, they send you a notice that your bill has been updated. This gives you an undeniable urge to go online through the painfully long process of tracking down said bill. Once found, there is a delightful $200 charge for "Whatever the hell we want for no good reason".

Once all of your bills are paid, the clerks go back into the vault to dive and swim in the mountain of cash. This is similar to Scrooge from Duck Tales. After several months of that, they eventually get around to issuing those reimbursement checks for students that overpaid or they'll watch movies in the break room.