I’m feeling a bit duped by most TE offerings, too. D24 did get three, but only one school became affordable as a result … and that was still at a COA of 18 or so. Thankfully, she’s high stats, high motor, and so on, so she got four offers from reaches that nearly cut that COA in half. D25 is TE or bust, so I hope I learn some new angles.
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@patrick3 is your child planning to do engineering? I’ve started looking into this for the future as mine is interested in engineering, but the TE schools with ABET-accredited engineering programs seem slim pickings and competitive/still expensive. I’ve been telling my husband after following this thread lately that we can’t count on TE. It’s definitely framed as a bigger benefit that it turns out to be for many. I hope things work out for your family!
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Has anyone on the waitlist for DePaul heard back yet? I did email the TE people but haven’t heard a peep. It is sort weird as it seems like the other TE contacts were very good about getting back to me.
Agreed that TE alone (even with full tuition, which many do not offer) is not enough to make college affordable for majority of campus employees — especially those with future engineers or multiple children.
(Then, too, is the issue of complicated feelings about being beholden to the home institution…)
Thankfully, our ‘24 just got an unexpectedly generous offer from the top choice (non-TE). Will be releasing 2 awards shortly that will hopefully help make someone else’s dream school accessible.
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Congrats on your top choice offer!
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If you have not already and are willing to share your TE status please fill out this spreadsheet:
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I’m feeling similar about this whole process. There are a lot more caveats than I realized.
A few thoughts I am currently pondering and may be helpful for future TE applicants:
- I think more schools are moving towards a set-rate. Be sure to check this right before you apply. I really think at least one school added this after I started my initial research and there were a couple we applied to that were set-rate and I never noticed!?
- Some schools add on a processing fee or some other fee like @patrick3 mentioned which diminishes the benefit
- One thing I am thinking about now is the cost of tuition increases if we go with a set-rate school. That can add up if the school is over $50k in tuition and has a 5%+ annual increase. I guess the set-rate changes a bit each year to help cover. But, some state schools lock in the price freshman year so that would lessen the financial gap. Not all schools have released their 24-25 rates but one increase I saw was shocking! (It went from a maybe to a no way in my book.)
- And what if D needs a 5th year and we don’t have TE! That’s a lot of $.
Lol! Not sure if you could follow all that but that is where my mind has been 
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TE is definitely not the stellar benefit it is framed as by HR when one is interviewing for a higher ed position, and especially at set rate schools, it is about on par with what a high stats student (for that institution) might be awarded in merit, if TE were not in play. That said, it can be a very generous offer, if all of the stars align. We’ve been able to put my D20 through four years at a TE school at less than $20k per year (R+B and the small difference between the school’s tuition and set rate award). Definitely not going to be the case for D24, where our best TE offer puts COA at $33k.
TE set rate does increase $1k per year. Not enough to keep up with the tuition increases at most schools these days, unfortunately.
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I feel this to my soul. Like why am I at a job making 10-30k less a year (and having my salary frozen for 3 years) and likely only 1 kid will be able to use this “benefit.”
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All good points. RE the 5th year issue - I’ve had D22 take summer classes (free tuition) at my university to guarantee she graduates on time from her TE school. We have TE through my husband’s university. I don’t know if she could take free classes there while using the TE award. If we didn’t have this option at my university I would have encouraged her to take a few community college classes for the same reason.
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I am most concerned about a mismatch between imports and exports. While I understand that there must be a balance and that some schools might not be able to fill all their “import” slots, are schools held accountable in any way if they have more potential “exports” than “imports”? Let’s take Pitt for example. They report offering 50 TE slots. They reportedly do not have a waitlist. Do they actually give benefits to 50 TE students per year? Chat gpt couldn’t identify the # of faculty at Pitt but I would imagine it is a large # and I have an hard time imagining their are less than 50 Pitt faculty across all campuses who at least try to use this benefit every year.
Are these data publicly available? They should be.
Faculty at sponsoring institutions deserve greater transparency in this benefit. I believe it is highly likely that schools may be withholding slots and therefore overall potential exports far exceed actual imports. That’s why it’s billed as a “scholarship”. The term “exchange” is misleading and TE leaders should change it and tell the truth about what is going on.
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where do they report 50? I thought it was 10 at Pitt.
My understanding is that imports and exports are not based on one year—that is, they do not have to balance out each year (e.g., 50 imports and 50 exports). They are supposed to balance out over several years, though I am not sure how many.
I would also love to know how this works out from an accounting perspective because, in some cases, you would think it is in their best interest to give out more. For example, Pitt is a set rate. If you are a student who already lives in PA, the in-state tuition is about $20K. The set rate covers that. So technically, they are getting full tuition from that student.
My daughter declined her TE offers at Skidmore and Syracuse last night. I’m not sure if they have waitlists, but if they do, I hope that helps someone here. I too am frustrated by having worked at my institution for 14 years always being told that my low salary would pay off when my kids went to college and got TE. My daughter wasn’t offered TE at her top choice. I agree that it’s not quite the selling point they make it out to be.
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It’s been interesting to read about this process. My husband is a university employee and his employer doesn’t participate in TE but provides up to $21,000 per year in children’s tuition assistance at the school of their choice (after you’ve worked there 5 years, which isn’t us yet). Do schools that participate in TE typically do so in lieu of providing tuition assistance like this? TE sounds like a great idea in theory but a difficult process in reality unless the stars happen to align.
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My S21 took a class (for free) at our home institution the summer after his freshman year in order to avoid an 18 credit hour load the following fall semester. I, too, was worried about this conflicting with TE but checked with our HR office and it did not; we haven’t had any issues with the importing institution. It was really nice for us to have this option, but I would always check with HR to make sure taking a class at the exporting school is not in conflict with the TE benefit.
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These are all great points. I agree about more schools moving to set rate. When S21 went through this I feel like there were more full tuition options.
I feel all the comments here about the TE process. I am stunned by how much more competitive it has become within the span of just a few years. When my oldest applied to Syracuse, they awarded TE who all students who got in; now it is much more difficult to get the award. As noted by some in this thread, schools that list TE awards at 11-40% seem to be giving fewer. Any prospective hire should be made aware that this benefit (which it is, when it works out) is not guaranteed. To their credit, our HR department has been really good about clarifying this.
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I feel like there’s a lot to weigh when considering this benefit, as people are mentioning. I didn’t realize until really starting to research all the little caveats, like how many schools are set rate and that in many of those cases it ends up cheaper to be full-pay at a state school than to have TE, or how it’s really a very competitive scholarship. It’s just not framed that way for us as employees until you really start digging into it.
My home institution was suspended from TE for several years some time back due to something about not having enough imports or too many exports (?). I wasn’t paying attention at the time to understand exactly why. We have it available now, but that’s not guarantee we always will. We have two other exchange programs that are full-tuition (like CIC-TEP) and probably easier to get, but a shorter list of small private schools.
I also think there are a lot of TE schools that are probably much easier to get the TE award for, but those aren’t the “viewed as more prestigious” schools that the masses are wanting to apply to.
My kids are 3 years apart in school, and my understanding is only one can have TE at a time, so I’ve been mulling over that, too.
The whole salary thing is definitely something my husband and I have talked about since I started learning more about this. It might be better to get a higher-paying job and just save more money to pay out of pocket. But on the other hand, if we are able to use the benefit, or if my kids end up wanting to go to our home institution, it would be hard to walk away from that option at this point after getting all these years of seniority!
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I think CMU does something like this. I like how that gives you more flexibility with where your child decides to go, especially since CMU could be hard to get in for an average student.
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Lol! Not too long ago my husband mentioned changing schools/job and I’m like NOT right before our kids are about to use the tuition benefits! (Maybe 10 years ago…)
In regards to TE, I do think it is best to think about it as a scholarship (I’ve even started to refer to that with friends as opposed to an exchange) when talking schools. And, I think what is particularly nice about this scholarship is that it is significant and the pool of applicants is (I assume) much smaller 
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