What Is with Registration Fees?

My daughter's dance class teacher this year waived the registration fee if you paid the whole year up front. To me that would not have been worth throwing $560 up front, but when she called me this summer to discuss my daughter's progress, she told me if I paid up front I would get 10% off the whole year, we decided that made sense to do, since we have to pay her preschool $160 a month (which had a $75 registration fee!!!)
Good Luck, and have with all the activities!!!

Mom,
I work at a preschool and the reason they have a registration fee is to hold your child's spot in the class. Our preschool is a non-profit, church affiliated pgm and we are allowed by the state to have no more than 38 young children per day enrolled due to the size of our facility. It is a great preschool and well known in the city. Our reg. fee is a one time fee. Many new parents start calling in late spring and through out the summer for enrollment in our fall pgm which starts in mid-August. All returning families have 1st priority for the fall class, but we take a number of new students too. Unfortunately many parents sign all the paperwork and say they plan to enrioll their child but are purely shopping around for the best price, not the best program for their child. We have the registration fee to be paid up front as a committment to the pgm before school starts to hold thier child's spot. This year alone we've had a number of new childrens parents cancel a day or 2 before preschool started, or child didnt show up the first day ( or even bother to call us), that paid the fee, because they found something else more convenient or cheaper. This left us with 4 unexpected openings that we had turned people away for earlier in the summer. It is unusual to get that many registered new families dropping out, but apparently the $50 fee didnt mean anything to them. Not sure if this helps explain the preschool registration fee but if you see our side of it you will understand. I know it gets costly when you have a number of children in preschool, lessons and sports too. I hear ya!

Nope. But they should be good for a year.

As a fomer gymnastics club owner I can tell you that we did NOT make money on registration fees. Those fees went to pay for insurance to keep us as well as our gymnasts safe.

if you are a member of the dance studio etc. a lot of times you can ask for them to waive or at least reduce the fee. a lot of times you can negotiate prices for things like this...all they can do is say no : ) but many places will say yes

I suggest that the registration fee is a part of the cost of doing business. They have to pay someone to give you the forms, go over them with you to be sure that she/he understands them and that they're correct and then process the registration. This includes keeping track of how many are registered and paid to hold the position so that they can limit the enrollment. This persons answers the phone, mails out forms and program descriptions that they've probably been the one to produce.

They could do away with the registration fee and increase the tuition. Would you feel better about that? But then how would they know for sure who will be attending. Usually parents won't back out when they know that they will lose their registration fee. If they do back out the organization still has the money that paid for the cost of organizing and maintaining the registration process.

Do you have to pay 6 months tuition in advance? If that's the case then they wouldn't need a registration fee. However, I doubt that you are required to pay in advance. I've not run across any programs that did that. If you do pay 6 months in advance at registration then I'd ask for them to waive the registration fee.

Some organizations also do a credit check which costs as much as $35. This is paid out of the registration fee.

That IS ridiculous! I hate it when they hike up fees like that! I think you moms who have your kids in those activities should band together and go to the place of activity and say if they don't do something about those high fees, you're going to remove your child out! What would they do withouth the kids? their business would not function, get it?

Not unless you're on scholarship. When we've been on scholarship, the registration fee has been waived most of the time. For most of kiddo's activities (7 of them) they have annual registration fees, unless it's a seasonal sport. We haven't done scholarships for 4 years now. SOMETIMES (if it's a monthly recurring thing) they'll spread out the registration fee, but that's iffy.