Dear Deans, Directors and Department Heads,
We are writing with important information regarding the Graduate College Tuition Waiver policy.
As a reminder, revisions to the reimbursement policy were approved by the Graduate College Executive Committee in Spring 2019 and went into effect with the start of the Fall 2020 semester. Please note that there has been an important change made to the newly implemented policy; it will apply only to appointments issued to students entering the University in Fall 2020 or after.
A summary of the newly implemented policy follows:
- Reimbursement will be assessed for waiver-generating assistantship appointments if the following criteria are met:
- The appointment is for a student in a master's or certificate of advanced study degree program that has a tuition waiver policy of “reimbursable”.
- appointment is outside the student’s academic college.
- The student has no other waiver-generating appointments (see the waiver priority policy).
- The reimbursement policy excludes doctoral programs from being designated as “reimbursable”. No reimbursement will be assessed for appointments issued to students in doctoral degree programs.
- For programs that are designated “reimbursable,” the reimbursement rate has been revised to establish a cap of 80% of Resident Graduate Base Rate tuition per semester of appointment. At AY 20-21 tuition rates, this is a cap of $5,270, per Fall/Spring semester. There is no reimbursement for summer automatic waivers that result from a Spring appointment.
- The new tuition waiver priority policy provides further guidance on the reimbursement process for instances when a student holds multiple appointments or split appointments.
- Departments are no longer responsible for "seeking reimbursement". At the end of each fiscal year, academic colleges will be reimbursed for qualifying appointments through an annual process coordinated by the Graduate College.
Current tuition waiver designations for graduate programs are available on the Graduate College website.
The full Graduate College Tuition Waiver Policy is available in the Graduate College Handbook.
The Graduate College has created an interactive data tool to provide colleges and units with current appointment data. This tool has been updated and can be found at https://apps.grad.illinois.edu/waiversreimbursement/. (Login with NetID.)
Programs who wish to request revisions for the 2021-2022 academic year, can do so until January 15, 2021, by completing the Tuition Waiver Policy form and submitting it to the Graduate College (grad@illinois.edu).
We would be happy to answer any questions you may have, please feel free to contact us at grad@illinois.edu.
Sincerely,
Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko
Dean, Graduate College
