Hey everyone,
I’m at an R2 in the mid Michigan area with awful graduate programs (learned the hard way they’re horrible). I met with the program director to ask about ways I can get income now that my funding ran out (thankfully I got a full time instructor job) and extension credit hours came up. He said over my Zoom call with him that I didn’t need to pay for the extension credit hours and could request an extension of access. He said that if I then went without enrolling in a credit hour in the summer then “they’d yell at 'cha.” I reviewed the graduate bulletin policy and it says on the website that I needed to enroll in one extension credit per academic year as opposed to per semester to remain continuously enrolled. However, I read in a mathematics department handbook that it had to be one per Fall or Spring semester rather than Fall and Spring semester. I even asked the office manager who audits degrees and she said that I only needed to enroll in one if I wanted access to my university’s resources.
I enrolled in an extension credit hour last semester since I had a $1,000 scholarship that paid it off and I could get benefits like parking and whatnot.
I don’t know if I’m too paranoid but I’m concerned if what I was told by everyone may be wrong since the program director himself seemed to miss some of the details of the continuous enrollment policy. I really, really don’t want to be dropped at all because I tried to save some money on things. Is there any way I can appeal if they do drop me as a student at all?