Impact of Regents’ Decision to Change “Educational Fee” to “Tuition” on Budgeting for Sponsored Projects

At the November 18, 2010 meeting of the Regents of the University of California, the following changes were made to Regents Policy 310 (University of California Student Fee Policy and Policy on Fees for Selected Professional School Students). These changes are effective as of July 1, 2011.

1. Changing the name of the Educational Fee to “Tuition”
2. Changing the name of Fees for Selected Professional School Students to “Professional Degree Supplemental Tuition”
3. Changing the name of Nonresident Tuition to “Nonresident Supplemental Tuition”

Berkeley’s Office of The Registrar has implemented these changes for 2011-12: http://registrar.berkeley.edu/?PageID=feesched.html.

Principal Investigators should note that these changes will impact proposals to sponsors that have been willing to pay the above charges as “fees” but currently disallow “tuition” charges. This means that PIs will no longer be able to budget for fees if in fact these charges are now more appropriately termed tuition.

How sponsors will react to the change in classification of such charges under existing awards is not yet known. SPO will provide additional information on this as it becomes available.