Graduate Tuition Remission Policy

Graduate student support takes many forms, including salaries for research assistantships from grant funds and teaching assistantships from state funds. Support also comes in the form of tuition remission, whereby out-of-state tuition is paid by funds given to the Graduate School by the State legislature.

Tuition remission has generally been available for all of the graduate students in our Department who have needed it, for a maximum of ten semesters for doctoral students or four semesters for terminal masters programs. Our Department receives a budget allocation from the Graduate School for the total amount we may offer in the form of tuition remission for the academic year. In the past we have occasionally exceeded our allocated budget at no real cost to ourselves since the Graduate School has been able to cover the over-runs. The significant permanent cuts to the University's budget from the State now makes the likelihood of such over-runs being covered much less likely, and we must now exert more fiscal prudence in how we allocate these funds.

Several students have been able to win prestigious external or internal scholarships, and these often come with a budget to cover the students full tuition. It is Department policy that those students, whose support from such sources equals or exceeds the out-of-State tuition costs, will not be eligible for tuition remission. Only in that way can we be more certain of utilizing our limited tuition remission funds to provide support to the maximum number of students who need it.