Like students at colleges and universities throughout the country, Hillsdale students love Spotify. But as a result of the college’s decision to not accept federal funds, Hillsdale students have to complete extra steps to qualify for the service’s monthly half-off student discount.
Hillsdale College’s enrollment data doesn’t appear in the database used to verify students’ college enrollment. As a result, students have to send in documents proving their enrollment through a manual verification process to qualify for the $4.99 per-month student rate instead of the normal $9.99 per-month premium rate.
In order to manually verify their enrollment in Hillsdale, students can send SheerID, the verification company that handles enrollment verification for Spotify, a picture of a student ID that has been issued in the last three months, a picture of a class schedule, or a tuition receipt.
While manual verification isn’t as fast as the “instant verification” process available to Title IV accredited schools, Spotify says this process can be completed within 12 hours.
Title IV accredited schools allow students to participate in federal financial aid programs from the Department of Education, which Hillsdale College does not do.
Spotify and SheerID both confirmed to The Collegian they’re aware Hillsdale students have to manually verify their accounts, but according to SheerID, the process isn’t going to change unless Hillsdale becomes Title IV accredited or SheerID uses a different database to determine student enrollment.
Other institutions excluded from the list include Patrick Henry College, as well as future Great Midwest Athletic Conference competitors Davis & Elkins College and Ohio Valley University.
Interestingly, Hillsdale Beauty College is available on the list of institutions.
The extra steps students required for the student discount aren’t the first time the college’s decision not to accept federal funds have complicated the school’s relationship with other institutions, especially governmental ones.
Though Hillsdale does not accept federal funding, the college does submit some data to be included in analyses of accredited ranking companies such as U.S. News and World Report, which use data from the federal government to generate rankings. Additionally, after a decades of withholding, Hillsdale began submitting information to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System last year.
Junior history major Chandler Lasch manually verified her Hillsdale enrollment last spring when she signed up for Spotify.
“I did the free trial and it was great,” Lasch said. “Then in March, March 16 actually, because I have the email from customer service, I went to sign up, and Hillsdale wasn’t on the list.”
Lasch submitted a scan of her student ID, but it was rejected.
Ultimately, Lasch was able to get the student discount by sending the SheerID Verification Team a picture of her class schedule.
“I’d encourage people who are interested to try it because once you get past the ‘Hillsdale isn’t a real school’ factor. It’s a pretty painless process,” she said.
But the need to manually verify Hillsdale enrollment is enough to turn away some students.
Junior economics major Stevan Bennett Jr. said he planned to sign up for Spotify Premium’s student discount last spring, but decided against it when he learned he would have to verify his account manually.
“I thought it was worth $4.99 a month, but it’s not worth $9.99 a month,” he said. “I did see the, ‘If you don’t see your school here, click this’ button, and I guess it just wasn’t worth it for me to follow through. So I’m still using free Spotify.”