Financial Arrangements for Reciprocal International Student Exchanges (effective Fall 2009)

Indiana University policies to support sustainable student exchanges are designed to support the most commonly encountered worldwide model for establishing student exchanges, in which participating students pay regular tuition and fees to their home university while enrolling at the host university without payment of tuition or fees. This document outlines IUPUI implementation of this model.

IUPUI Registration Procedures/Tuition and Fees for Approved Programs Established under Recommended Registration Model

This model assumes that incoming students will be fully registered in courses taught by the School sponsoring the exchange. Under the IUPUI income attribution model, all tuition income generated by fees assessed to student accounts flows as income to the school(s) teaching the courses in which the student is enrolled.

Outgoing IUPUI Students

• The IUPUI School sponsoring the exchange should establish variable title courses associated with the program to facilitate full-time IUPUI enrollment during the time students are abroad.
• Students earn direct credit for study completed while on the exchange program, which encourages program participation.
• Assessment of regular IUPUI tuition to outgoing students covers instructional costs for incoming students.

In other words, the school sponsoring the exchange retains the tuition income from the outgoing students without having to allocate instructional effort for that student.

Example:

Incoming Students  

• Visiting non-degree admission will be to campus-level program coding (INEX) for eligible incoming international exchange students. Undergraduate (INEX0) and graduate (INEX9) coding is available.
• The IUPUI School sponsoring the exchange needs to cover a full tuition remission for the visiting students.
• Mandatory fees will be covered at the campus level for students with INEX program registration.
• As a special administrative service, the Office of International Affairs (OIA) will process the remission to the school’s designated account to facilitate consistent services for all visiting exchange students and waive application fees.
• Tuition income generated by students with the INEX program code will be excluded from the calculation for the Enrollment Shaping Initiative so as not to disadvantage the school.

Except for marginal assessment costs, the tuition income generated by the incoming student’s registration covers the cost of the fee remission.

Example:

Reciprocity Requirements*

This financial model depends on equal numbers of students being exchanged; however, exact one-for-one exchanges within every fiscal year may not be realistic. Programs will retain eligibility for INEX coding for incoming students (with access to campus-level funding for mandatory fees and exemption from Enrollment Shaping calculations), provided a reasonable expectation of balance in reciprocity over a three-year period is demonstrated. Schools need to manage student flows accordingly and may have to restrict numbers of incoming or outgoing students if an exchange is not in balance. The OIA will track numbers of participants, and schools should consult with the OIA annually before confirming participants.

Any school can choose to permit an imbalance in students travelling in either direction, subject to policies of the partner institution. When the number of incoming students exceeds that of outgoing students for the three-year timeframe for reciprocity, additional students would no longer be eligible for INEX coding. In this case, the OIA would admit additional students accepted by the school directly to the host school as regular visiting non-degree students, and the school would need to assume responsibility for all financial and administrative matters.

*If desired, the reciprocity formula for a student exchange can be constructed with a mix of short-term summer, semester, or academic year study, with reciprocity balance based on credit equivalence.

Exchanges involving Enrollment in Multiple Schools

Options to facilitate participation across multiple IUPUI schools are currently under discussion. At this time, however, University procedures do not provide a mechanism to adjust funding flows if a visiting exchange student enrolls in coursework outside the school sponsoring the exchange; therefore, any special arrangements for incoming students to take courses from multiple schools would need to be agreed upon and arranged by the participating schools.

The School sponsoring the exchange program is responsible for establishing and communicating enrollment expectations for incoming students. In some cases, the opportunity to take a course outside the sponsoring school could enhance the exchange experience of the participating student. For example, a student in a Liberal Arts-sponsored exchange may request permission to take a course offered by the Kelley School of Business, and the KSOB may sponsor an exchange in which participants may benefit from taking an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. In this case, the two schools may approve the cross-registration without incurring a financial loss.

April 2009
IUPUI Office of International Affairs