Q: Our district is moving towards passing credit card fees onto our students/clients. Do you have any specific feedback on this regarding effects on enrollment from other programs who have done this?

A: Thanks for the question.  LERN would strongly recommend against imposing credit card fees on your adult and community education students.

Here’s what we know:

1. No other community education or lifelong learning program has imposed a credit card fee without losing registrations and income.

If others could do it, they would have.  And we review hundreds of brochures and programs a year, and do not see any other program doing it.

2. People who buy with credit cards, on average, spend 25% more than those who pay with checks and cash. 

This is true for community and adult education programs as well. So basically the additional income you receive more than pays for the credit card charge.

Which is why we recommend every program accept credit cards.

3. The school district’s image will suffer with the very people it depends upon – taxpayers.  We know that some people will simply refuse to register with you because they are offended by the credit card charges.  But more importantly, taxpayers who take a NKSchools community education class will vote 20 points higher than the average citizen when it comes to a school district referendum/mill levy, etc.   Offending your taxpayers for credit card charges will result in far more image-damage than it is worth.

4. There will be a cost in staff time processing fees with credit card charges, and those without.  Your whole business registration software will have to be reprogrammed.  You should definitely figure out how much staff time will be spent on this, because it will cost you staff time which could be used in far more productive ways.

5. If you need to generate more income, there are a number of options.  You can simply raise some of your fees selectively, which LERN knows works and we can help you do.  We can analyze your brochure distribution and help you increase registrations and hold down costs.  We can suggest where to create and offer more new courses, and where not to offer new courses, which reduces your staff time and boosts your income.

The Learning Resources Network (LERN) is the largest community education association in the world. These recommendations come from decades of experience and data from your fellow programs. We would strongly recommend against imposing credit card fees on your adult and community education students.