When their tuition payment is due, some students have to use credit cards to pay on their bill.
But paying with a credit card often comes with an added cost.
Ohio University Bursar Sherry Downs said the use of a credit card to pay tuition and fees adds a 2.9 percent convenience fee to the total cost.
“We have a third-party company that processes those payments for us, and there is a real cost associated with processing credit cards, so the majority of that fee goes to paying the credit card fees that banks charge,” Downs said.
On average, colleges charge a 2.62 percent fee on tuition payments, which is lower than OU’s 2.9 percent rate, according to USA Today.
Freshmen under the OHIO Guarantee pay $11,744 in tuition and fees each year.
If students paid all of their tuition with a credit card, they would pay about $340 more per year, assuming that they pay off their credit card debt every month.
William Shambora, associate professor and chair of the economics department at OU, said the cost of using a credit card could be much more than OU’s 2.9 percent convenience fee.
“It’s not unusual to have to pay 1.5 percent a month on unpaid balances,” Shambora said. “So if you’re going to use a credit card to pay your tuition, you better pay it off before the month is over. Otherwise, you’re going to start accumulating huge debt.”
Shambora echoed Downs’s sentiment about payment with credit cards, saying that credit cards are essentially another loan taken out from a bank that must be payed off.
“It’s a terrible way to pay,” Shambora said. "It’s very expensive."
Downs said she sees no advantage in paying with a credit card over the other payment options available at OU.
“I wouldn’t advise it, personally,” Downs said.
She said students sometimes don’t realize they are getting charged extra when they run their debit card as a credit card during the transaction. She said students could use electronic checks, which like credit cards, can only be used online. There is no service fee attached, but students have to provide their account numbers and their bank’s routing number.
“They really should be using the electronic check feature and be getting their bank account information from their bank and running the payment that way so it doesn’t cost them the extra 2.9 percent,” she said.
Austen Pleasants, a sophomore studying physical activity and sports coaching, said though he doesn’t pay with credit card, he believes it is the easiest method of payment.
“If you use a debit card, they make you go through this long process … It’s just easier to put in credit card information and use that,” Pleasants said.
