Maricopa Steward

Adjunct Faculty Tuition Waivers—When Does Tuition Waiver Eligibility Begin?

The Maricopa Community Colleges offer tuition waivers to full-time regular employees, part-time Board-approved employees, adjunct faculty and others as outlined in the Tuition Waiver Handbook. Tuition waivers serve as an employee benefit and eligibility begins at the point of employment. For adjuncts, employment contracts may not always align with the start of a traditionally scheduled class and this has created challenges for tuition waiver processing. In the past, if an adjunct sought to use a waiver for a course that started prior to a teaching contract, the waiver should not have been processed. There were two primary reasons for this: the extension of benefits prior to employment and the possibility of the contracted courses not making.

During the start of the recent fall semester, as colleges sought to administer adjunct waivers according to eligibility start dates, it was discovered that more than just a few adjuncts were enrolling in courses prior to the contract start dates. In order to resolve concerns related to internal controls and against the concern of a typical one day difference between class start date and contract start date, effective for the spring 2010 semester, adjunct waiver eligibility will be defined as follows:

MCCCD adjunct faculty members are eligible for up to six (6) credit hours of waived tuition when they are contracted to teach credit hour courses. The waiver may be used for courses that begin within a seven day calendar period as the teaching contract. An adjunct faculty may elect to defer the use of a waiver during a term that follows teaching, but the deferral must take place within the same fiscal year of the contract. Contracts to teach non-credit hour courses are not eligible.

This accommodation will allow for waivers to be processed if there is a slight difference between the contract start-date and the start of the semester. Instances where there is a difference greater than seven calendar days between a contract and a waivered course will not be approved. Adjunct faculty will still have the opportunity to defer use of the waiver after completion of the assignment through the end of the fiscal year of the contract.

The Tuition Waiver Handbook can be found online at the Legal web.