I would like to know if health insurance is treated as a fee at your
institutions and covered under the institutional allowance on your NSF Grad
Research Fellowships.  We have never considered health insurance a fee.
Students are required to have insurance but they can be covered by their
parents or can purchase it on their own.  If they don't have coverage, they
must purchase it either through the university or on their own.

We asked NSF and were told that it should be covered with the allowance.  We
are very reluctant to do this as most of our research assistantships and
teaching assistantship programs cover tuition and fees.  If we call health
insurance a fee for one group, are we opening ourselves to a claim from all
of our students that we should cover their health insurance as well?

We did check the guide and it seems to have  seemingly conflicting
statements:

"The actual use of the cost-of-education allowance is at the discretion of
the affiliated institution."

"While on fellowship tenure status, Fellows will be exempt from paying
required tuition and fees normally charged to students of similar academic
standing."

Unlike tuition and fees that are paid to the university, health insurance
premiums are paid to an outside vendor.  The allowance falls far short of
covering our tuition and fees.  We accept that we will receive reduced
income when a student has one of these fellowships.  Paying health insurance
would not just be a reduction in income, it would be an expense that we
would have to cover.

I'd like to know how others are handling this.

Sharon

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