Blessed by the Potato

I just got my university fee bill, and my tuition for the semester is $2150.02. Right below that is a line for “anticipated aid” indicating that my scholarship will pay $2150.00. I don’t know if there was some sort of rounding error or miscommunication between the various departments of the university, but there’s a two cent difference there. In past semesters, that difference was more like $30, which we were told was for “tax reasons”. Years before that even (man I’ve been in school a long time), and we have an era where the entire tuition fee was covered by scholarships.

This is pretty confusing, and I don’t know if I’m expected to pay the $0.02, or if my scholarship will cover that and a simple rounding or other error happened somewhere along the way. At the bottom it says that any late payments not made by Sept 5th will be subject to a late payment charge of $105. I’m afraid that the university is just daft enough to charge me $105 on a late payment of $0.02, so I’m going to just pay it anyway, out of fear. I suspect though that it will lead to a balance carry-forward, which may lead to the hilarious situation where the university cuts me a cheque for two cents (two years ago they didn’t give me my fee bill on time, and I had to guess at what I thought tuition was and pay that… I of course made a conservative guess and overpaid by about $50, and instead of just taking that off my next semester’s tuition, they promptly sent me a cheque).

So I’m going to give the university my two cents, with the expectation that they’ll likely throw it right back in my face.