When a public university accepts students’ tuition dollars, the least it can do is avoid making them jump through hoops just to get an education.

That’s why we’re glad to see WKU has grasped the obvious when it revised a registration policy last semester that barred students from signing up for spring classes if they had so much as a delinquent parking ticket.

WKU President Timothy Caboni put it best in a recent interview with the Daily News.

“For $25, we’ve said to a student, ‘You can’t register and come and pay $5,000 in tuition,’ ” Caboni said. “That is the dumbest business decision I’ve ever heard of.”

Likely, almost all college graduates can think back to their experience with campus life and remember some clerical crisis they had to settle by scurrying between offices and departments so they could move ahead with their degree.

Now imagine being a first-generation college student, a student from a low-income household or an underrepresented minority student who may not have family members to help or provide advice.

With WKU rolling out new initiatives to hold on to students, it shouldn’t be tripping over its own bureaucracy and giving students the runaround.

The new policy, which no longer places registration holds on students who owe $1,000 or less, makes more sense. It will require the university to put in the extra work to earn students’ support by working with them. Not against them.

It’s also more considerate of students who are generally being asked to pay more of the university’s operating costs year after year.

Last year, WKU approved a 4 percent tuition hike for students and its Board of Regents is currently weighing a 2 percent hike for next year for undergraduate resident students. That’s in line with a 6 percent cap set by the state over the two-year period.

That’s why we encourage this admittedly modest step by the university to return to its perennial mission: helping students access the education they need to build lives of promise.