Why don't we accept credit cards for tuition payment?

This is an issue schools across the country struggle with, and even though many schools accept credit cards for tuition, many do not.

The primary reason we do not accept credit cards for tuition payment is the cost. The processing charge is approximately 1.8% to 2.5% of the amount charged to a credit card. For instance, a $3,071 credit card payment would cost us a minimum of $55 to process. We are not able to cover this cost with our current budget.

Businesses and other campus units are able to include the credit card processing charge in their cost of doing business, and adjust prices accordingly. The State does not allow us to do this for tuition.

A second reason we do not accept credit cards is that even though credit card companies allow schools to pass the processing charge on to the payer as a service fee, the rules to do so across the different credit card companies are not compatible with each other. Some schools deal with this by not accepting Visa, but get complaints from parents and students who want to use Visa.

And lastly, our computer system can accept credit card payments, but would need additional programming to manage the credit card refund processing rules. This constraint is a resource budget issue.

Our cost to process an on-line ePayment is about $0.06, and about $0.25 to process a paper check, so we are happy to offer these options for you to pay tuition.