When out-of-state students apply to UC Davis graduate programs, they learn that they will pay well over $11,000 per year more than California residents. It’s a situation that could prove especially costly as graduate programs seek to stay competitive, campus community members say.

Karen Jo Hunter, a staff adviser in food science, regularly sees first-hand the impacts of non-resident tuition on prospective students. "We’re considering several students from overseas this year," said Hunter. "It’s very hard financially for them and for us to fund them all. Students everywhere now have the belief that graduate work should be covered by the school, and we’re competing against very good food science programs – at Rutgers, the University of North Carolina, Cornell and the University of Minnesota, among others."

In response to these concerns, a joint committee – made up of members of the Academic Senate and administration – has been looking into possible models for implementing a non-resident tuition remission policy for graduate student researchers. The 12-member committee has been meeting since last summer and has developed two remission policy alternatives – an average-cost model and a cost-by-residency model.

For the average-cost model, any fund source that employs a graduate student researcher (GSR) at 25 percent time or greater would contribute to a central fund. In 2002-03, this contribution would have been about $2,900. By contrast, in the cost-by-residency model, the fund source that employs a non-resident graduate student researcher pays the entire non-resident cost for that student – approximately $11,000 per year.

The average-cost model – which is viewed as most attractive by the implementation committee – appears to offer the greatest advantage for the greatest number of people, said Bruce Madewell, co-chair of the committee and Academic Senate chair.

"The model will be favored by investigators who commonly select non-resident graduate student researchers or who would like to select non-resident GSRs," he said. "It will be less favorably received by investigators who have not typically selected or who are not likely to select non-resident GSRs. However, the committee believed that this approach would encourage programs and faculty to make decisions based on academic quality and that it would have a lower administrative cost than the cost by residency model."

During the next two months, committee members, including Dean of Graduate Studies Jeff Gibeling, will be consulting broadly with campus groups and collecting input. Gibeling hopes to have a campus decision in May on which proposal to adopt. All proposals for funding would take the selected remission procedure into account at the beginning of the new fiscal year, July 1.

Increasing support for graduate education is a high priority for UC Davis, said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw, co-chair of the committee with Madewell. "Implementing a tuition remission policy is a needed step in generating additional resources to enhance our competitiveness," Hinshaw said.

According to UC Davis’ non-resident tuition remission policy Web site, in Fall 2002, the campus enrolled approximately 3,675 graduate students. About one-third of these students hail from outside California and that number is growing throughout the UC system. A remission policy is needed, committee members say, to respond to these changing demographics and to aid in the recruitment of high-quality applicants – many of whom will assume some teaching responsibilities as Tidal Wave II brings thousands more undergraduates to campus.

"The need for a non-resident tuition remission policy is based on the observations that most public and private research institutions charge all or part of their tuition to grants and contracts and that UC Davis ranks ninth among UC campuses in net stipends to graduate students," Madewell said.

The policy will have the direct effect of increasing support for graduate students in research titles, but it will also benefit other students by releasing block grant funds that now are used to pay non-resident tuition for GSRs, Gibeling said. "These funds will remain in the block grants for use as stipends, fee fellowships or non-resident tuition fellowships for other students," he said.

Federal policy requires that a campus-wide plan fairly assess all funding sources in order to charge non-resident tuition against federal grants. These grants constitute more than 40 percent of graduate student researcher appointments.

"The proposed non-resident tuition remission policy is only one element of our overall plan to increase the level of graduate student support at UC Davis," Gibeling added. "This step is a partial response to widely expressed concerns regarding non-resident tuition. However, we must take additional steps to ensure that we are able to recruit the best graduate students to UC Davis."

Campus community members are encouraged to review the models and provide input at http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/nrt/nrtmenu.htm.