The University of Colorado is enriching the Tuition Assistance Benefit for the upcoming academic year – expanding the benefit’s value, eliminating wait times to register, and making the benefit more flexible for families with multiple college students. Policy changes are effective July 1, 2024.

CU provides Tuition Assistance Benefit to help its workforce and their families achieve their educational and professional goals. During the 2023-2024 school year, 2,454 CU employees and their dependents applied for and used TAB at all four campuses.

CU continues to improve the tuition assistance policy and has implemented significant changes every 2-3 years. These exciting changes continue to expand the benefit for employees and dependents in our multiple-campus university system.

Change #1: Total TAB credits expanded

The first TAB change expands the number of total credits offered.

What’s new?

• Benefits-eligible employees can now receive up to 12 credit hours per academic year, which runs from fall to summer.
• Benefits-eligible CU Anschutz, CU Denver or CU Colorado Springs employees can now receive up to 12 credit hours for dependents at their home campus per academic year.
• Benefits-eligible employees can receive up to $270 per credit hour for up to 12 undergraduate credits ($3,240 total) for dependents attending a CU campus other than the employee’s home campus.
• Benefits-eligible Boulder employees can now receive a 40% discount off tuition for dependents attending CU Boulder for each semester.
• Each dependent of CU Boulder employees may use the full 40% entitlement if one parent is employed by CU Boulder, or 80% if both parents are employed by CU Boulder.
• If both parents/partners of a dependent or are employed by CU in eligible appointments, a dependent(s) may receive up to a combined maximum of 24 credit hours per academic year or 80% of tuition on the CU Boulder campus for CU Boulder dependents.

Previously, benefits-eligible employees and dependents could claim up to 9 credit hours per academic year or CU Boulder dependents could receive 30% off tuition each semester.

Change #2: Tuition Assistance is easier to share among families

What’s new?

• Employees and their dependents can now use their tuition benefit concurrently in the same academic year, and even in the same semester.
  • Employees can apply the TAB to a different campus of enrollment at the beginning of a new semester. However, employees cannot be concurrently enrolled on two separate campuses during the same semester.
  • Dependent TAB recipients may not be enrolled at more than one CU campus in an academic year.
• CU Boulder employees can receive up to 12 credits per academic year and their dependents can receive a 40% discount per semester concurrently.
• CU Anschutz, Denver, and Colorado Springs employees can split their 12 credits between themselves and their dependents each academic year.

The previous policy required employees to designate themselves or their dependent(s) as the beneficiary for the academic year. Although splitting of the credit hours between multiple dependents was allowed, splitting between the employee and dependent was not.

Change #3: Enroll in classes earlier

Employees no longer need to wait to register for classes.

What’s new?

• Starting July 1, CU’s TAB policy removed the requirement that employees needed to wait until 7 days before classes start to register.
• Degree-seeking employees may register and wait-list during normal designated registration periods.
• Non-degree seeking students may have different registration windows and should consult their campus for more information.

Each campus follows its own registration calendar, which can be reviewed on their respective Office of Registrar websites.

• CU Boulder
• Denver/Anschutz
• Colorado Springs

Under the previous policy, employees had to wait to register for classes until seven calendar days prior to the first day of the semester. This timeframe sometimes made registration difficult as courses would reach capacity before employees were allowed to register.

Change #4: Taxation clarifications

The new policy clarifies how TAB is taxed and outlines all tax guidance in one area of the policy.

• Employees are not taxed for any TAB amount when taking undergraduate courses.
• Employees are not taxed for any TAB amount when a dependent takes undergraduate courses, unless the dependent is a domestic partner or a child of a domestic partner.
• Employees are taxed for any TAB amount above the $5,250 threshold when taking graduate courses.
• Employees are taxed for the total amount of TAB when a dependent takes graduate courses.

A new TAB experience

For full details, visit the Tuition Assistance Benefit website or review the university policy.

Applications for the fall 2024 semester will open on Aug. 1.

With these improvements coming to the Tuition Assistance Benefit in fall 2024, we hope to hear from you about your experience on the CU Advantage website.

For questions regarding TAB and the upcoming changes, email the Employee Services Benefits team at tuitionbenefit@cu.edu.