Gabrielle Lee graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English, emphasis literature, in 2024.
It was supposed to be simple, straightforward paperwork.
Instead, I’d already made a half-dozen phone calls, sent over 10 emails and now was having to take the afternoon off work.
It was July 2024, and I’d spent the last eight days in communication with UBC’s Enrolment Services (ES). Transcripts and diplomas fall entirely under ES’ jurisdiction, and I needed academic documents sent to the University of Cambridge, where I’d be attending graduate school come fall. Since I was making little headway over email and phone, I resigned myself to driving over to their office so I could speak to someone face-to-face.
Most graduate school admission offers are conditional. To confirm one’s place, institutions often require a student to fulfill an academic condition, which is done by submitting documents following graduation. Usually, a final transcript that verifies one’s overall average, degree achieved and grade in a specified course is needed.
Nowadays, the standard and expected method of sharing a transcript is an electronic transcript system, an online platform that allows universities to securely share official documents between them. It is a simple, one-step process to send verified academic documents across borders. One can complete the process online, and it takes no longer than five minutes.
However, UBC does not use an electronic transcript system like Cambridge does. Because of this, I’d had several conversations with Cambridge, and they’d offered me an alternative method of fulfilling my admission condition: an email directly from UBC that contained my official transcript, a letter of completion, and a colour scan of my diploma. Cambridge was clear that all three were necessary.
Without one, it is easy to see how complicated the process can become. In my case, sending an official transcript through the SSC was simple enough, but I was running into problems with the other two requirements.
Cambridge deemed the Student Services Centre-generated completion letter insufficient and needed one that was personalized and certified additional details. As for a diploma scan, ES has no system in place to send an electronic version of the UBC diploma to any institution, even though many universities no longer accept documents through post.
Frustratingly, scanning and sending a copy of my diploma myself also wasn’t an option, since Cambridge needed the documents to be issued directly by the awarding institution. So, I would have to ask ES to perform two services that, despite their essential nature, they do not even offer students.
I started with emails. Though I made sure to clearly outline the background of my situation, ES proposed only futile solutions. They recommended couriering my diploma or submitting only my transcript, despite me informing them that I’d considered the first and attempted the second, and neither were options.
I turned to phone calls, which, impossibly, only complicated the situation further. Staff members began to offer me conflicting information, and it became evident that ES lacked accord across the department.
There seemed to be no standard procedure, and each time I called, I received wildly different information. One employee assured me that if I brought in a paper copy of my diploma, it could be scanned and emailed to Cambridge. When I called back the following afternoon for further details, I was told by another employee this was not possible. Others made vain suggestions that I had already tried or that disregarded the academic documents I truly required. More staff still rescinded responsibility by insisting that I ask Cambridge to change their requirements, ignoring the fact that I’d already done so and that concessions had already been made on their end.
I was beginning to grow frustrated. I had a deadline coming up, and if I didn’t verify my academic credentials in time, Cambridge had every right to rescind my place.
Which is how I ended up at the Enrolment Services offices on a Friday in mid-July, explaining myself once again.
The staff member I spoke to was abrupt, curt and clearly irritated at having to handle my request. After back-and-forth for about half an hour — I had to justify my request by showing her documents from Cambridge — and, after consulting with multiple colleagues, she grudgingly agreed to scan and email my diploma.
It was not sent without a caveat; she stated multiple times, and ES even wrote in an email to me that “[ES] do[es] not normally send out [an] electronic version of the UBC diploma to any institutions or third parties.” When I inquired about a personalized letter of enrolment, she outright refused, even when I explained that I had no feasible alternatives. Instead, she offered me an ultimatum: the diploma scan or nothing at all.
It’s not lost on me that it was a complicated, likely bothersome task. However, I do not feel like what I requested was unreasonable, unprecedented nor unnecessary, and I was disappointed by how grossly unequipped ES was.
I was made to feel as though I was disrupting staff and that I shouldn’t have even been making my request when ES is the very department at my university that handles these asks. ES’s approach was narrow and uncompromising, in a way that seemed to ignore my needs.
Surely, I am not the first UBC graduate to need documents sent abroad, nor will I be the last. In fact, when I mentioned the documents were for a university in the UK, ES staff were unsurprised. It was my impression that they were aware that UK institutions are notoriously finicky about academic verification — and yet, they have done nothing to address their inability to help students in my position.
UBC is a huge, global university; however, the second I needed assistance with transcripts and diplomas, the systems were non-existent and staff were apathetic, at best. And my experience hardly feels singular, anyway.
ES endeavours to “provide exceptional enrolment and registrarial services,” according to its mission statement, yet effective assistance is the very commodity that ES seems so reluctant to proffer, at least in my case.
The reviews I have heard from friends and peers online only echo my experience — misinformed, unhelpful staff who provide unclear information, total inconsistency in the knowledge and preparedness of employees, unwelcoming and impolite staff, difficulties in sending academic records to other institutions and frustrating, unproductive interactions. And all this occurs in sectors of ES beyond just transcripts and diplomas. Whether one heads to East Mall for guidance on tuition, student support, student loans, or any of the other several areas that ES governs, their approach seems to remain the same.
ES’s shortcomings call into question their mission statement and prompt one to wonder how successfully they are serving the student body. Such a crucial aspect of UBC’s administration seems to fall short on simply every level. The department has made it incredibly challenging for students to be served in an uncomplicated, agreeable or effective manner, no matter the sensitivity or importance of their request.
I would like to believe that ES really does stand by their vision, mission and values, and that they take the experiences of their students into consideration. By ensuring the staff team is well-informed, prepared and polite across the board, students will receive their deserved consideration and assistance. Additionally, neither UBC nor ES is insular, and it would be helpful if the department took into account that they are often working in tandem with other universities and third parties. A single-minded and unyielding approach that fails to consider alternatives or a student’s personal circumstances only brings about more obstacles for the person the department is trying to help. The implementation of valuable and modern systems — such as a method to share the electronic version of the UBC diploma — would also benefit the student body.
In the end, it was the Faculty of Arts that — after a singular conversation — thankfully agreed to write me a personalized letter of completion that displayed all the requested information. When I went to see them, they worked with me past close, and I received the letter the very next morning. Arts is not even responsible for issuing letters of completion, and it was certainly an unusual request. And yet, when I explained that ES had denied me, they were tenfold more willing to listen to me, consider my circumstances and offer me the assistance I required. With that, I had all the documents I needed.
I did end up at graduate school, from where I sit writing this right now. I submitted my documents just before the deadline, and everything was indeed fine in the end. However, my experiences with ES and UBC have stuck with me. A process that should have been painless and trouble-free quickly descended into one that was stress-inducing and frustrating.
I couldn’t say I was even surprised.
From my time at UBC, I knew how particular the university could be about things like this. ES seems to signal greater things about UBC’s oftentimes fussy, rule-bound and red-taped administration. Unhelpful, disinclined and inflexible no matter the circumstances, it feels as though ES — and on occasion, UBC itself — is working against the students’ causes rather than for them.
This is an opinion article. It reflects the contributor's views and does not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.
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