If you're attending the University of Belize - and especially if this isn't your first semester - you're probably used to the issues with the registration portal. It's likely you've spent hours trying to get into your classes, receiving error messages, and having to email teachers to squeeze you in. You might have even encountered a situation where you couldn't get into a class, and had to stay back an extra semester.
For one UB student, he says he spent 8 hours trying to register, and had to send multiple emails. And he's gotten similar complaints from his colleagues. So they came together to send an open letter, which they emailed to the dean, student services, the director of ICT, the registrar, and the secretary for the registrar.
But after a week, they've gotten no reply. Lance Howard spoke to us yesterday about their frustrations.
Lance Howard, Student, UB
"Every single semester, for the first day, it is inaccessible, you get errors all the time, nothing is working, you try to go on, it takes you a whole day to log in, select your classes and register for them. And if you don't register for them, you have to email UB teachers and those teachers may add you to the course at their discretion. Most of the time they do. And then you don't get billed for these courses and then UB charges you a late fee because you pay what they tell you that you owe, but that's not actually what you owe, you owe more."
"I'm not the only person having this problem, we got 20 people to sign our email which was an open letter to UB, to which they have not responded. A lot of people have this issue, a lot of people don't want to be public facing, so they're not gonna come out here and make a fuss about it. I think that it's abhorrent that UB teaches IT skills and they don't have an IT department that can sort out a basic registration portal for- they know how many people are registered because they have access to all the information, they should know how many people will be there at peak time and they should be able to scale out a system that works during peak time but it's just not there, they don't want to do it."
"For example, this semester, I need to do them online because I just started my own business, which means I'll be doing a lot of traveling so I can't be in Belmopan. So if I don't take it this semester, it means I have to put it off for another semester which means I then incur a surcharge of $400 in administrative fees for every new semester and you know, I'm held back for more time than I want to be here."
"Sometimes I look at the invoices, which you know, sometimes are not correct and like the amount of fees of them, it's like I'm at Belize Bank, they have fees for ID which I've never received, they have fees for exams in classes that don't give exams."
"And then every semester, a $400 surcharge, a $400 administrative fees, I don't know what that covers but sometimes it feels like the administration isn't doing what they need to do."
And we took those concerns to the president. He said he didn't see the email, but added that they're aware of the issue and they're currently working on it.
Dr Vincent Palacio, President, UB
"That was not sent to me as the president of the university. And we are doing all that we could to make sure that this problem does not happen again. And there is a Taskforce working as we speak. There was a meeting on with the supplier of the software that we use this afternoon. So we're working diligently to make sure that we have the adequate system for our system. I'm aware of the concerns, I have two sons who go here as well so the frustration is real so we are doing our best to address it."
Courtney Menzies:
"How is it that it's just being addressed? I went to this school ten years ago and I had the same problems from then."
Dr Vincent Palacio, President, UB
"I can't speak to that, we're trying our best, I'm the president today and we're trying our best."
"It's not an IT issue. It's a software that we buy from outside, it's called Xenegrade. And they're the ones who host the process, they're the ones who do everything for the process. So our IT just supports us around here. The bandwidth issue is one of the supplier, of which, if you notice for the Bachelor Degree registration, it was seamless, they did something that worked. So in the future we have to make sure we get to do what works at registration time."
