It’s not an issue at Smithsonian, but my last job was at a university. There, as long as the sponsoring agency allowed us to ask for tuition remission as well as the stipend (not all sponsors do), we always asked for both. If a student was only participating on a grant-funded project for part of his/her time, then we would pro-rate the tuition remission to match their effort level (i.e., if half the student’s stipend was coming from the grant, then only 50% of the standard tuition waiver was charged as well). Any student getting a tuition waiver, whether paid from the university’s funds or on a grant, was charged at the in-state rate (it makes sense to make that provision: otherwise, you’re needlessly inflating your expenses, and limiting your ability to attract qualified students who may not be residents of your state).

 

Routine fees were normally the students’ responsibility. However, in special circumstances we would also attempt to budget for certain fees in grant proposals. The one that I remember was a project that required participating graduate students to spend considerable amounts of time living abroad (they were working at CERN), resulting in additional insurance fees. We reasoned that since they wouldn’t have to pay the fees if they weren’t being supported on the grant, it was allowable to ask the sponsor to cover the extra amounts, and they did so.

 

To my recollection, we never had a sponsor (who allowed recovery of tuition costs) balk at asking for the tuition remission. At worst, there might be questions about whether we really needed the level of effort (or the number of students) we had requested, but no one ever suggested it was inappropriate to ask the sponsor to pay both stipend and tuition. And the faculty didn’t gripe about it either: they were mainly concerned about having good students working in their labs, and not having to find money to cover their tuition was a bonus in their eyes.

 

 

Michael Spires

Proposal Development Specialist

Office of Sponsored Projects

Smithsonian Institution

Mail: MRC 1205, P. O. Box 37012

Washington, DC 20013-7012

Voice: (202) 633-7436

 

 

Good afternoon.

 

We have historically requested ONLY the costs of graduate student stipends from our sponsors; never the tuition. It has been our practice to provide tuition scholarships from an internal allocation when the stipends are covered by the sponsor. We do this whether cost-share is required or not.

 

Does anyone request both stipends and tuition from sponsors? How do you address out-of-state tuition and fees? If you made the change recently, what sort of results have you seen from your sponsors? What sort of push-back have you received from your faculty?

 

My sense is that our current practice is not uncommon, but in these days of tighter budgets, leadership is asking all areas of the campus to become more and more creative at covering and cutting costs, and this is one suggestion that has been handed down the chain.

 

Tom

 

 

Thomas F. Kornacki, CRA

Director

Office of Sponsored Programs & Research

Bowling Green State University

P: 419-372-2481

F: 419-372-0304