Graduate Students and Tuition Remission

Background

Temple University policy states that full-time doctoral students be supported through tuition remission and a graduate stipend. Tuition remission is also an important tool for attracting strong doctoral candidates to our programs. The College of Public Health Office of Research Administration understands that a Principal Investigator (PI) must balance tight budget constraints with compiling the resources needed to successfully complete a project. These guidelines are provided to balance the needs of full-time doctoral students, PIs, and the budget for the College.

Effective Date

The guidelines established herein are effective March 15, 2018.

Tuition Remission Coverage

The Office of Research Administration will cover tuition remission for doctoral students in the following two scenarios:

1. In Years 2 and 3 of doctoral studies for a student who was awarded a Presidential Fellowship.
2. In Years 2 and 3 of doctoral studies for a student who was awarded a University Fellowship.

The Office of Research Administration also will cover tuition remission for doctoral students on active, externally sponsored projects when the Principal Investigator or Department covers the student’s stipend and the Principal Investigator’s cumulative indirect cost recovery from the previous fiscal year (July to June) meets the following criteria:

Tuition Remission Distribution
Calculations of the ICR funds available to support graduate student tuition will be made in the spring of each year and shared with the the department chair at the spring strategic planning meeting with the Office of Research Administration. This will allow for planning by principal investigators and departments in advance of the next graduate application cycle in the following year.

Tuition remission will be ‘awarded’ to the principal investigator/faculty mentor. If the principal investigator/faculty mentor does not have a student who needs remission, the award can be ‘reserved’ for 12 months for a future student if the principal investigator has sufficient funding to support the doctoral student through 4 years of doctoral training.

Other Sources of Funding
The doctoral student’s stipend may be covered by funds from the following sources: externally sponsored project; internally sponsored project; start-up funds; or the faculty mentor (or department’s) indirect cost recovery funds.

Career Development Awards
Tuition remission will be provided by the Office of Research Administration for up to one full-time doctoral student for faculty members who receive federal career development awards. 

Requests for Tuition Remission
Requests for tuition remission must be reflected as cost share during the eSPAF process each year. The Office of Research Administration will consider covering tuition remission during a no-cost extension if there is sufficient evidence of the potential of future funding to support a doctoral student throughout 4 years of doctoral funding.

Students Excluded from this Policy
The Office of Research Administration will not cover tuition remission for:

• Master’s level students
• Part-time doctoral students
• Doctoral students funded through a foreign government or external agency
• Doctoral students identified as ‘self-funded’ during the admissions process
• Doctoral students enrolled in a program outside of CPH.
  

Grant Submissions
For the purposes of grant proposal budgets, the Office of Research Administration will continue to recommend that Principal Investigators include tuition and stipends as a direct cost to the sponsor, when an allowable expense. This process will ensure that tuition expenses are available if the Principal Investigator is working with a master’s level student or a doctoral student who is not
eligible for Office of Research Administration support. The standard practice is to budget the maximum number of credit hours possible, at the out-of-state rate.

There are several scenarios where tuition expenses cannot be budgeted. For example, some sponsors will not cover tuition or some mechanisms do not provide sufficient funds to cover tuition in addition to the stipend. In these cases, or when a PI knows they will select a master’s level student, the PI should ensure that they have sufficient funds available in a professional development (16) account or start-up (14) account to cover tuition.

Additional Support for Doctoral Students
The college encourages doctoral students to apply for NIH F31 proposals and similar mechanisms. For individual grants that support a student’s stipend, the Office of Research Administration will cover the tuition not covered by the sponsor. For example, NIH F31 covers 60% tuition and the Office of Research Administration will cover 40%. NSF fellowships do not support tuition, so the Office of Research Administration will cover 100%. Small grants that only cover dissertation expenses are not eligible for tuition remission.

Tuition Remission Planning
Faculty members are encouraged to communicate early in the proposal development process with the Associate Dean for Research and their pre-award administrator to discuss this and other budget issues.