I just joined up on this site because my oldest child is now beginning his college apps. While I feel fairly sanguine about the app process right now, I’d like to get in touch with any of you who are also college professors. Our family is in a unique position with regards to tuition remission, tuition exchange, etc, as I’m sure many of you (faculty) are with your kids. Thinking maybe those of us in this position could share strategies or concerns.
I’m not a college employee myself but have a family member who is. The family member’s child did end up attending the university where the parent is employed and the child’s financial aid package is extremely generous, between tuition remission and other financial aid.
Ours are already through the process, but the biggest eye opener to us was realizing that our tuition benefit from the university employer counts to reduce our financial need. Early on, I assumed it was our “money” to use to meet our EFC. Discovering that it counted against our need and therefore converted us to full pay family changed our kids’ searches entirely.
I am older, having been on this board since '04, and have faculty friends at colleges across the country. My take away is that there is no consistency in faculty benefits, even to participants at the same university, much less around the country. If you are fortunate enough to have friends on the faculty willing to share their experiences that may be useful. My advice is to get in touch with HR and negotiate yourself. Some of this won’t be possible till you actually have offers in hand. The universities your kids attend may be able to help you. Merit aid will generally be better than financial aid, since you can stack merit aid in many cases. Your university may resist this. Good luck.
Yes, I realize it’s different everywhere. Just thinking it would be nice to connect with other faculty parents going through this. I have met with our HR department and understand what our benefits are. Given my faculty status, we have a very generous benefit and we are extremely grateful for it. College faculty don’t make as much as you’d think!
Anyway, my child is not interested in attending the school where I teach (I can’t blame him for wanting to move away). Our benefit will depend on whether or not the school he ultimately goes to is within our tuition exchange program. If it is not, then we have a different benefit. In that case, our son’s institution would not even be aware that we are receiving said benefit so it would not affect any aid. We likely will not qualify for aid anyway (perhaps a small amount). But that is really interesting information re aid reduction for tuition benefits. Yikes.
But there are aspects to the application process that will be different for us, particularly in the area of tuition exchange. So if there are any fac parents out there, chime in!
Re: Tuition Exchange. I assumed for years that, if admitted to a TE school, our high-stats child would be awarded TE. Was surprised, then, by how competitive it can be. DS was admitted to the Honors College of one school but put on a waiting list for TE … and to stay on the waiting list, we’d have had to accept a lower offer of aid and submit a deposit. (Didn’t do it.) Fortunately he did have some good choices, but not guaranteed, like I was foolishly assuming.
Agree with all the above, the usefulness of benefits vary a lot.
I have a professor friend whose household income is not high. It turns out that his S got almost a complete free ride (tuition, room, board) from an Ivy school. As a result, my friend did not use his “benefits” with our university, which only covers tuition, but not room and board.
I am a college professor as well, and we do have a tuition benefit program within our university system, but my son is going to a college that is not part of our system, so I can’t help you with dealing with the benefits office, etc…
But if your question is more about the decision making process, and whether or not to limit your child to applying to schools where you can take advantage of your tuition benefit (or whatever), I guess I would say this: it’s a personal decision that depends on the means that you have available and the relative values you place on things. For us, we were willing to support the best fit for our son, regardless of whether that was in our system or not.
So know what you are willing and able to contribute to your child’s education expenses, without worrying about the tuition benefit (at first). Determine whether your child is a potential candidate for the types of schools that guarantee to meet the demonstrated financial need of all or most admitted students; and/or whether your child is a potential candidate for merit scholarships at the types of schools that offer such awards. If so, these are other levers that you might be able to use, in addition to (or as an alternative to) your tuition benefit, to find a school that is a great fit for you child that you can also afford.
In retrospect, I would say, run the NPC early at schools of interest, and read the fine print on school’s websites. I believe Bates was one of the few schools which specifically said that tuition benefits reduced need – and that turned us on to realize our tuition benefit was not “our” money to meet our EFC.
We just finished the process – youngest son is now a freshman. My husband is an academic; I am a former academic. We spent years investigating and strategizing around the tuition exchange program. In the end our son applied to 3 tuition exchange schools (all matches or safeties on paper). He got into two of them and waitlisted at one – none offered TE. We appealed the lack of TE at two where he was admitted to no avail. I started a thread on how the TE benefit is not what it is cracked up to be, but some posters there were snarky and I stopped following that thread.
The interesting part is we got a deal equal or better than TE at a top college that has a reputation for poor merit and poor FA. I conclude that sometimes, merit money and FA depends on how much the school wants the particular student. In our case, the chosen college was starting a new major that matched my son’s interests and strengths.
The tuition exchange at some colleges depends on exchanging student slots among member schools.
I didn’t qualify for the $ benefit but DH’s school had a % of their tuition cost written into contracts as a remission benefit for FT faculty. No negotiating.
Yes, it gets reported on the CSS Profile. We still got good FA (Meet Full Need college.) This remission is much like an outside scholarship. I will say, his employer was always slow processing the payment and the receiving college was amazingly patient.
College professor parent here as well.
My university belongs to both the Tuition Exchange and the CIC (Council of Independent Colleges) Exchange. We don’t “import” enough students for our children to be eligible for Tuition Exchange schools. However, I was able to send one daughter to a CIC school.
Each CIC school seems to make its own rules about how it accepts students. I believe that schools within the CIC take 2 each year, but the definition of 2 seems to vary. It could be a total of 2 or 2 each incoming year for a total of 8. Also, how those 2 are picked varies. A colleague’s son missed out on his first choice because that school was “first come, first served.” Other schools choose among the applicants to find the top 2 incoming each year. If you are CIC eligible, the best thing to do is to work with your university liaison to know what rules apply to each school.
The CIC exchange was a great deal. It was for tuition, so it went up in value each year my daughter was in school. Paying only her fees and room and board was a great deal for a wonderful education.
I find all of this info useful. And I knew the Tuition Exchange wasn’t a sure thing, but it’s interesting to read everyone’s experiences. In addition to exchange, we have a tuition benefit that basically is rendered as additional income. It gets lumped in/reported on our 1040s and would affect any aid we receive if we file FAFSA b/c our income will be higher. Since we likely will not qualify for aid anyway, I don’t think this will ultimately affect us. I’ve spoken with our HR dept to confirm the specifics of our benefit, but it’s helpful to hear about the obstacles/disappointments/successes other’s have had.
Yes. It has become clear to me some colleges have the ability to go way beyond what might be expected to enroll a particular student, a good reason to apply very broadly and then compare offers, if trying to reduce costs. A good position to be in might be meeting with different FA departments in the spring to negotiate the best situation for your family. I am convinced there is an A, B, C, FA list at most top colleges, and some families getting aid might not have expected any. At colleges that award merit aid, without regard to need, the ability to stack scholarships can really add up. Some awards aren’t restricted to tuition, and can be used for room, board, books.
Good luck with all this.
@ProfessorMom1 Yes, our tuition benefit erased our need and made us a full pay family, without full pay resources. Some schools’ financial aid sites say that, other schools confirmed that when we asked.
As a result, our kids knew affordability mattered, as our income does not support us taking out loans to get them through school. One wanted large, and to get away from home, so went to public flagship OOS, which worked out to about $20,000-25,000 less per year than full pay at private, particularly since most kids moved off campus after freshman year and we could control cost of living with housing choices. OOS flagship kid had a world class academic (and social) experience. The other kid wanted/needed small, so we focused on LACs ranked roughly 35-70, since we needed substantial merit to bring the price down. We realized that in the midwest, many LACs have lower sticker prices for both tuition and room and board than schools back east, so are already less expensive for a full pay family. Then, schools like NESCACs, Vassar, Haverford, had to come off list since there was no merit. Our LAC kid had a very competitive high class who tended to judge their peers’ college options, so our kid developed his 30 second explanation for why “X” which included the 1/2 tuition merit award he received. Both kids are/were ecstatically happy with their college experience, and have been pushed and challenged by their professors and very talented peers.
My kids have a professor parent (Big 10 public U) but there are no benefits offered.
I went through the Tuition Exchange process even though my child eventually chose a non-TE school. She did receive TE at a couple of schools and as good or better than TE at the other TE schools she applied. The highlights:
USCalifornia - best TE value. USC gives you 80% of the USC Tuition. They also stack merit on top of it up to full tuition + $8,000 for Room and Board. Since my child was a NMF and received the Presidential she hit the FT +$8K plus they threw in a couple of smaller awards for FT + $11K a year. It was our best deal but being 3000+ miles away eventually eliminated it.
BU - she got $35K TE award. They did not give her merit which supposedly can stack. Not sure how likely that is.
Pitt - she didn’t get TE but got a FT scholarship. They get like 300+ application for 25-30 TE awards. I believe they generally award these to OOS students since they are worth more that way. My D is in-state so giving her an institution FT scholarship makes more financial sense.
Fordham - She got the FT NMF scholarship which is better than the TE scholarship.
Smith - When we checked her jr year Smith was part of TE. When I sent the application last fall they had stopped being a TE school 
Oldest was awarded te at one school and declined at another. As others have pointed out, tuition exchange is highly competitive, even at schools that aren’t so competitive for admission. That child chose to attend my employer.
Youngest was awarded te at every school where she applied for it. Yes, our search did include more schools on the te list than not, but it also included a safety–affordable school she’d be happy to attend without te. Since tuition exchange in the group we were using is always full tuition (it isn’t in all of them), there won’t be any aid on top. Merit aid from the institutions themselves reduce the amount of te. Different schools handle that differently. Some give the students the “honor” of the merit award and make up the balance with te; others just don’t award the merit. YMMV. State/federal aid are applied to tuition first and te covers the balance. Some allowed outside scholarships to stack; others did not. Youngest child chose a school where outside scholarships stacked, so she made out like a bandit.
I should add that TE isn’t competitive at USC - they have more kids going out than kids coming in for TE.
For those of you who received a cash benefit (not tuition exchange), how did it appear on your W2? I’ve emailed our HR person but haven’t heard back yet. Curious if it is reported in box 1 of W2. The only other spot I can figure would be box 10 or maybe 14. But there are empty boxes so maybe in there?
I’m digging into this: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p970.pdf which says Box 1, but I can’t tell if this sort of educational benefit mainly means employee pursuing education for job purposes (rather than tuition benefit for child of employee).
“If you receive educational assistance benefits from your
employer under an educational assistance program, you
can exclude up to $5,250 of those benefits each year.
This means your employer shouldn’t include those benefits
with your wages, tips, and other compensation shown
on your Form W-2, box 1. This also means that you don’t
have to include the benefits on your income tax return.”