Tuition and Fee Waivers

Background

Under campus policy, graduate students who hold graduate
assistantship appointments of 25% to 67% for at least three-quarters of the
term receive tuition waivers. Graduate students on fellowships with stipends of at least $3,000 per semester receive tuition waivers from the Graduate
College.

Tuition waivers are treated as a resource like other resources
such as budget and space. As such, the campus tuition policy also allows
colleges to ask for reimbursement for lost tuition from units outside the
college that employ their students. However, FAA has decided that such a
practice would be disadvantageous to our students' employment opportunities and
we do not request reimbursement from units outside the college that offer assistantships
to FAA students with the exception of the School of Architecture (see below).
Annually, colleges are requested to review their policies regarding the waivers
and the changes are published each fall by the Graduate
College in An Administrator's Guide to the Campus Tuition Policy in Regard to Graduate
Assistantships.

Policy

Full tuition waivers continue to accompany assistantships (as
described above) for student in all units except for assistantships held by
students enrolled in the School of Architecture
(see below).

Stand-alone Waivers

Under emergency conditions, the College will consider a unit's
request for a stand-alone tuition waiver, i.e, one not accompanying an assistantship.
For such a request, the unit's letter to the College should include the
following elements:

  1. The emergency nature of the need for the waiver;
  2. The consequences of not awarding the tuition waiver;
  3. The reason that the College should absorb the lost income;
  4. The actual dollar amount of the requested waiver, whether for
    in-state or out-of-state tuition, and the number of semesters;
  5. Verification that this will not be the sole support of an
    international student;
  6. Verification that the student is in good academic standing;
    and
  7. The signed endorsement of the Unit Head.

Fellowships

The Graduate College
awards a full tuition waiver to accompany any fellowship that carries a stipend
of at least $3,000 per semester. Units should work closely with the Graduate
College to ensure that tuition and
fee waivers are awarded appropriately to students who receive fellowships from
internal or external sources.

School of Architecture
Tuition Waiver Policy - Effective Fall 2001

In accordance with the campus tuition waiver policy, students who
begin the M. Arch degree in Fall 2001 or after and who receive assistantships
will receive only "base-rate" waivers, i.e., the waivers cover no
more than the in-state lowest full-time tuition and the service fee, regardless
of the student's residency status and regardless of the source of the
assistantships. The students are responsible for paying the remaining tuition.

In addition, the School of Architecture has received approval from the
Provost and the Graduate College to seek reimbursement from other
units for any tuition income lost through tuition waivers accompanying
assistantships that those units award to Architecture students. The
reimbursement sought will be the value of what is waived, i.e., the base-rate
tuition (about $2,650 per semester in 2002-2003). The School will seek
reimbursement only from certain campus-level administrative units such as the
Chancellor's and Vice Chancellors' offices, and Operation and Maintenance.