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[kewashin]

Tuition remission remains the single most explosive issue confronting the College of Arts & Sciences, The Graduate School, and all of Academic Affairs. Many chairmen continue to look upon budgetary allocations as a statement on what emphasis the institution places on research and graduate education. At the same time the problem of precisely controlling the departmental budgets remains difficult... We approach the problem of fluctuating departmental needs by making an initial allocation very early in the spring semester of the preceding year and then a reallocation at the end of the fall semester --when more accurate information was available.

--Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.; Memorandum to Provost Morrow on the 1980-81 UNC Tuition Remission Budget


As a research assistant for the Graduate School at a North Carolina R1 institution, I have become infatuated with an issue raised by our former Dean: Should we be offering tuition waivers as opposed to tuition remission for talented graduate students?

It seems to me that graduate education is central to the mission of American Higher Education. In fact, I would argue that academic productivity and the very reputation of an institution are tied to the success of its graduate programs. As such, many institutions seek to maintain a competitive edge in the recruitment and training of skilled graduate students by providing financial support in the form of tuition remission, reimbursement and waivers. While much has been written regarding the efficiency and affordability of higher education and its policies during the past few years as a result of the “audit society,” a gap exists within the literature regarding the efficiency of the [graduate] tuition reimbursement process.

How are reimbursements processed? Who is involved in the processing of student reimbursements?  Is there a better and subsequently less expensive way of doing things? What best-practices exist? Moreover, even less is known as to the basis on which policies affecting the allocation and distribution of funds rest. Why tuition remission? Waivers? Reimbursement? What are the differences between each? On what basis does reimbursement policy differ from state to state; institution to institution? What are the benefits --both manifest and latent --of one approach as opposed to the other? Is a particular approach more costly? Less expensive?
 
On face value, it seems as if tuition waivers make more sense. Transaction costs, both for the student and the institution are lower. For instance, consider the costs --in time and money --associated with training staff (at the college and department levels) on complicated policy, rules and regulations, the costs of developing and maintaining institution specific technology for the tracking of student reimbursements, or the lack of efficiency in moving pools of monies back and forth between the institution and its colleges, the colleges and their departments and the departments and the cashier's office.

Waivers also seem to be a better suited for the recruitment of talented graduate students by the notion of slot shortages; That is, talented students being denied funding due to caps on the number of remission allocation slots to a particular college or department.

What are the pros and cons from your seat at the table?

[psychprof]

First, I don't think that the production of graduate students is the central mission of higher education. The central mission of higher education is teaching undergraduates in a way that allows them to become productive and engaged citizens (jobs, life enjoyment, and full participation in civic life).

Graduate students are most valuable as an extension of the research infrastructure, which is one thing that has helped make many institutions of higher education great and has had a great impact on the USA.

That said, I don't know if there is that much difference between tuition remission and tuition reimbursement. I like tuition remission because it does make the direct student paperwork less cumbersome, but there is still paperwork involved. In NC the tuition remission issue is complicated because tuition remissions are assigned through the UNC system office through the influence of the legislature. So, that complicates things somewhat.

My vote: Tuition remission. Neat, clean, easy to administer. Grad students like it as well.

[the_myth]

Ok, this thread is begging for some stipulated definitions.  Let's see if I can suss them out for discussion

The 3 main options for grad student tuition coverage are:

• tuition reimbursement
• tuition remission
• tuition waiver

For tuition reimbursement, a grad student would pay the bill, but eventually get the money for said tuition back from the department sponsor.

For tuition remission, the grad student would [in my case] go have several forms signed in triplicate [with the requisite pint of blood and contract to sacrifice any potential firstborn child in the name of Satan], then take said forms to the Graduate Office to be processed and have the tuition charges removed from the semester bill.

For tuition waiver, would the grad student just not got charged at all for the courses to which s/he enrolled???  If so, I am all for that!  In my eyes, graduate assistantships should have tuition as a perk, not as part of the pay, which is what some [evil] administrators want everyone to believe.

Why on earth would anyone in their right mind fork over 1/2 of their pay just to be educated at the school at which they work?  They don't make staff who get tuition paid for count it as salary, do they?  [I mean, they might, but that strikes me as very unfair.]

But, see, this opens up that whole nonsense of graduate students are not employees crap that could lead to unionization and better ultimate compensation and such.

So, if I am interpreting what is meant by tuition waiver correctly [never heard the term before today], then I vote for that!  No one pays in that schema, and yet limits on enrollment can be set from within...and according to "job market."

[kewashin]

I believe that our Dean’s question was concerned more with the efficiency of the process, rather than justification for graduate tuition remission.

Psychprof is right.. In North Carolina, the legislature has a set budget for graduate remissions that it allocates to the UNC system (+/- some $$$ depending on state surplus or cutbacks). From there, the UNC (system) allocates funds to each of its 16 constituent universities. The monies are then disbursed from each institution’s graduate school to the individual colleges, and in some cases directly to departments.

The process described above in and of itself is inefficient. Funds are moved –whether in reality or via contra-revenue accounts –a minimum of four times before a credit ever shows up on a student’s account. It is also costly and time-consuming.

One of NC’s premier institutions spends thousands of dollars each year adding modules to an outdated student aid tracking application which one senior administrator notes “doesn’t do what we really need it to do.” In today’s digital world, another major NC institution still cuts physical checks to its Cashier’s Office for each one of its graduate students receiving tuition remission. And, in another case tensions between departments continue to flare as chairs accuse one another of brokering deals to “steal away” remission slots.

In a field --and state (see UNC Tomorrow http://www.nctomorrow.org/) --which has given Paris Hilton-esque celebrity status to terms such as “efficient” and “cost-effective” … perhaps there is a better way.

The University of Illinois:

(b) Graduate Assistants

University graduate students with teaching, research, graduate or pre-professional graduate assistantship appointments of from 25 through 67 percent of full-time service, for at least three-fourths of the term hold a waiver-generating appointment. Students with these appointments will receive a tuition waiver.

In certain curricula, tuition waivers for students holding assistantships are "base-rate" waivers, i.e., the waivers cover the in-state lowest full-time tuition, regardless of the student's residency status and regardless of the source of assistantship. The students are responsible for paying the remaining tuition. It is the student's curriculum that determines the type of tuition waiver, not the unit granting the assistantship. Units that enroll students who qualify only for base-rate tuition waivers must provide written notification of the policy in advance, so that the students will know their status upon admission.

seems to be doing a decent job of managing its waiver system. However, I know there have been recent concerns with the policing the sheer number of waivers given.