1. Graduate school benefit programs Information and training: AY 2016-17
AGENDA:
Tuition Benefit Program Guidelines
Subsidized Health Insurance

2. Tuition Benefit Program Guidelines
To be eligible, grad students must be:
Full-time, matriculated
Compensated through the University of Utah under an eligible job code
Maintaining a GPA of 3.0 or above (2.0 for Law students)
Tuition Benefit covers:
Regular tuition
Mandatory fees
Non-resident tuition (except for RA’s who have reached 85 credit hours)
Tuition benefit does not cover:
Differential tuition charged by various university graduate and professional programs
non-mandatory fees (special course fees, etc.)
Repeated courses
Undergraduate and noncredit courses
Continuing Education courses

3. TBP Job Code Definitions
Graduate Teaching Assistant (TA), (job code 9416, Exempt): A graduate student with instructional responsibilities as instructor of record, assistant to the instructor of record or tutor. Duties may include lecturing, holding discussion or problem sessions, conducting laboratory sections, conducting studio or performance work, online instruction, grading, tutoring, and holding office hours. International students must be cleared through the International Teaching Assistant Program (contact Diane Cotsonas x ) before being placed in jobs coded Graduate Research Assistant (RA), (job code 9314, Exempt): A graduate student assigned directly to an externally funded research grant (5000 fund only) and doing research for that project.
We will be addressing the ITA program and requirements at the end of this session.

4. TBP Job Code Definitions
Graduate Assistant (GA), (job code 9330, Exempt): A graduate student assigned work related to his/her degree program and not covered in the previous two categories. A GA must be funded by his/her academic department and not supported by 5000 funding. If a student wishes to work as a GA outside his/her home (academic) department, prior approval must be granted by the Dean of The Graduate School.
Exceptions are generally granted in cases where the work of the GA will forward the student’s academic career, if the home department is in support of the request. A letter to the Dean from the student’s committee chair requesting the approval and discussing how the work will forward the student’s academic career is required.
GFs may have a service expectation stipulated by the fellowship award critieria – this is NOT a work requirement like TAs, RAs, GAs.

5. TBP Job Code Definitions
Graduate Fellow (GF): A graduate student on a fellowship, whose tuition is not paid by their fellowship award. TBP has right of first reversal if other sources of tuition funding are available. Fellowship payments may be distributed as a scholarship through the University’s Scholarship Administration System (SA), or in special cases as a monthly traineeship disbursement through Accounts Payable. Fellowship payments made through Scholarship Administration must be paid from item types set up as fellowships in order to count toward the student’s TBP-eligible income (with budget category code 66900). No employer- employee relationship exists in a fellowship. The University administers the award. A service expectation may or may not accompany it.
GFs may have a service expectation stipulated by the fellowship award critieria – this is NOT a work requirement like TAs, RAs, GAs.

6. Financial Support Requirements
Minimum support levels for the academic year are:
$7,250 per semester: 100% tuition benefit
$5,438 per semester: 75% tuition benefit
$3,625 per semester: 50% tuition benefit
No tuition benefit is granted to students receiving less than $3,625 in support for the semester.
Look at handout – difference between suggested levels of support and enforced levels of support for each year. These are enforced levels. The memo from the Graduate School Dean goes out every few years with suggested and enforced levels of support and is available on the website.

7. Financial Support Requirements
There are 9 pay periods in each Fall or Spring semester. The TBP calculates financial support for each semester based on payroll during the following dates:
Fall: August 16 – December 31 (final paycheck Jan 7)
Spring: January 1 – May 15 (final paycheck May 22)
Summer May 16 – August 15 (final paycheck Aug 22)
Payments outside of these dates do not count toward the financial support requirement for the semester.
We always run into problems with students who get paid outside of the dates for the relevant semester and we have to go in and manually over-ride the program. This is fairly easy to do while in the semester – but is much harder and requires a lot more paperwork from you, us and Income Accounting to do after the semester is over. We’ll talk about how to watch for it on the reports.

8. Financial Support Requirements
No student is required to work more than 20 hours a week (0.50 FTE) in order to receive a tuition benefit.
Faculty may expect up to:
20 hours of work a week (0.50 FTE) from students receiving a 100% tuition benefit
15 hours a week (0.375 FTE) from students receiving a 75% tuition benefit
10 hours a week (0.25 FTE) from students receiving a 50% tuition benefit
Students working one or more on-campus jobs with a combined FTE greater than 0.74 FTE are ineligible to participate in the Graduate Tuition Benefit Program.

9. Tuition Benefit ELIGIBILITY LIMITS
TUITION BENEFIT SEMESTERS OF ELIGIBILITY
Seeking a Masters Degree:
4 semesters of eligibility
Seeking a Doctoral Degree and entering with:
Bachelors Degree
10 semesters of eligibility*
Masters from University of Utah
6 semesters of eligibility*
Masters from Another Institution
8 semesters of eligibility
* A 2-semester extension is possible if student was a TA for 4 semesters. For eligible students, the department should submit a TA Extension Request form.

10. TBP REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS
For tuition benefit recipients only, full-time student status means registration of at least 9 credit hours throughout the semester. Undergraduate, contract and/or audited courses count toward the required minimum 9 credit hours but do not qualify for a tuition benefit. Students may register for a maximum 16 semester hours but are responsible for tuition for hours exceeding 12 credits. TBP covers 9-12 credit hours, except for RAs whose Fall/Spring tuition benefit covers credits, with 3 credit hours available in Summer semester. An RA can only receive TBP for summer semester IF they received TBP as an RA for either the previous Fall OR Spring. Also not covered: continuing education courses, repeated courses, non-graded coursework, etc.
The reason for the difference in credit hours for RA’s is because RAs are researchers and are on campus and in their labs the whole calendar year and are therefore offered the opportunity to take summer credits and avoid FICA charges during the summer when they otherwise would not be enrolled. Another reason is that a good majority of RA s are international students who need to be enrolled to satisfy visa requirements.
For these reasons they can take 3 credits in the summer and be on summer TBP (0nly ones)
This is old news should be common knowledge by now.

11. TBP Credit Hour Policies
IMPORTANT: Students adding and/or dropping courses after the semester's published add/drop deadlines are responsible for any and all charges incurred. If registration falls below 9 credit hours, a student becomes ineligible for TBP and will be billed the full tuition for that semester. Tuition benefit will not cover dropped courses. If a student drops after the drop deadline and does not petition Income Accounting to also drop the tuition charges, they will be responsible for the tuition. Don’t let this happen to you: contact your advisor and TBP coordinator before making any mid-semester registration changes.
Read slide
Explain undergrad, contract audited classes can get them to 9 but won’t be paid for. If they have one grad class and two undergrad class for a total of 9 credits fine they are TBP eligible but the tuition paid by TBP will only be the cost of the 3 grad credit hours.
Go back two slides show that the grad column could have 4 credits but the total could have 9 and they are still in compliance.
Read Slide
Each semester we have kids getting caught in this one. Once they drop below the 9 your full tuition bill is then the student’s responsibility. After the add/drop date there is a mechanism for to get credits on or off the record but it’s not a guarantee so it’s better just to be registered for the correct amount all semester.

12. TBP Approval: Email & Link
This is sent to your student account once your department coordinator has added you to tuition benefit. Click on the link to access the approval form.
The top half of this slide is the that goes out to the student, asking them to approve their tuition benefit information and agree to the terms. The bottom half is the link that the student can use to access the approval form directly from CIS.

13. Graduate Tuition Benefit Approval Screen
This is what you will see when you log in to the approval screen. Most of the commonly encountered eligibility issues are clearly addressed in the text here, but signing the approval indicates you have read the full guidelines. Links to those guidelines are provided.
This is what the student sees when they log in to the approval screen. Most of the commonly encountered issues are clearly addressed in the text here, but they also are provided with links to the guidelines.

14. CIS Access to Graduate Tuition Benefit Approval Form
If you didn’t get the , you can access the approval form directly in CIS.
Students can access the link directly through CIS if necessary. This is what the link looks like in the student section of CIS.

15. Questions?
Any questions about the TBP Report?

16. Graduate Subsidized Health Insurance
Eligibility is the same as for TBP, except limited to TA’s & RA’s at 100%
The plan is the same student plan that is available to all U students - only difference is the premium subsidy.
Student must be:
100% RA or TA
Combination of RA/TA that qualifies for 100% tuition benefit
OK we have been over this before but to be eligible for subsidized they have to meet all the requirements of eligibility for TBP.
And students must be 100% RA or TA or a combination that adds up to 100%.

17. Graduate Subsidized Health Insurance
The student portion of the subsidized insurance premium for the academic year is $ which is paid at $ each semester.
For Fall 2016, this must be paid in Income Accounting between: September 19 – September 30, 2016
Coverage periods for the subsidized plan ONLY are biannual: 8/16 – 2/14 (FALL), 2/ /15 (SPRING).
Enrollment changes cannot be made after TBP data entry closes (September 12 at 3 pm)
The $ needs to be paid in Income Accounting. It will not be added to the student’s bill until September 22nd They will have until October 3rd to pay. They can pay it online
There will be late charges after Oct 3rd but more importantly the if the student has not paid their premium by the 3rd they should not consider themselves insured. The Graduate School will not waive these nor will we lift registration holds due to non-payment of insurance premiums.

18. Graduate Subsidized Health Insurance
Adding Dependents to Coverage
Subsidized students must add dependents during the open enrollment period (Sept 13 for Fall). They do not need to wait for their own coverage to be processed, but should follow these steps:
Go to
Click on “Request Dependent Coverage.”
This form reserves coverage for your dependents. Once your own enrollment is processed by the University, you’ll be billed for your dependents’ premium.
All benefit, rate, enrollment information can be found at:

19. Graduate Subsidized Health Insurance
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS Are automatically enrolled in the voluntary student health plan and billed for the full premium at the start of each semester. If they are subsidized: a list of subsidized grads is sent to Kerry Hill periodically throughout the tuition benefit data entry period. She removes premium fees as quickly as possible. The subsidized fee won’t be added until September 21. International students with their own insurance coverage must complete a waiver process with Kerry Hill in the International Center. Coverage must be comparable to the student plan – Kerry can provide more information.

20. Questions?