Around thirty international students from the University of Montreal have been temporarily deregistered by mistake in recent weeks, we have learned The duty. The establishment intends to focus on automating some of its systems to prevent new “human errors” of this type from recurring.
On a regular basis, the University of Montreal monitors its international students to ensure that they have the documents required by the State to continue their university career. The establishment thus contacts students who have not provided the documents required to continue their post-secondary studies in Quebec. Those who do not provide the requested information within the prescribed period will then have their registration at the establishment revoked.
It is in this context that the university has had to “deregister 498 international students” since the start of the winter session, which began on January 8, since their files were incomplete. “Of this number, 183 students communicated with us and regularized their situation” in the last few days, which allowed their re-registration at the university, explains the spokesperson for the University of Montreal, Geneviève O’ Meara. These students, she explains, initially saw their registration revoked because they were slow to respond to the university’s requests for certain information missing from their file.
However, the establishment also “by mistake” deregistered 35 students in recent weeks, continues M.me O’Meara, who explains that the university registrar’s office was behind the blunder, which was quickly corrected.
“They were re-registered as soon as we realized our error,” assures the spokesperson, who recognizes that this “handling error” can “cause stress and dissatisfaction to the students who were victims.”
Reduce “human errors”
“We are working to understand what happened and ensure that it does not happen again,” notes Alecsandre Sauvé-Lacoursière, secretary general of the Federation of Student Associations on the University of Montreal campus. In an interview, he recalls that foreign students who see their university registration revoked without reason can experience a lot of anxiety. “It’s something that needs to be taken seriously,” he insists.
In order to prevent such a situation from recurring, the University of Montreal intends to focus on the “automation” of part of the process carried out regularly by the establishment in order to validate that they have provided the information required regarding their status.
“Currently, our registrar’s office is working with [techniciens en systèmes d’information] to develop a system that would automate the processing of certain requests to reduce human errors” of which international students may be victims, explains Geneviève O’Meara.