In August 2024, Ithaca College joined over 700 other colleges and universities across the country in the Tuition Exchange, an international program that offers scholarships for dependents of college faculty and staff. The college’s eligible dependents will have the opportunity to apply for Tuition Exchange Scholarships beginning in Fall 2025.

The Tuition Exchange is a reciprocal scholarship program, which means dependents who win scholarships can use the money to pay for tuition at partner colleges that are also part of the Tuition Exchange. Students are expected to use the scholarship for the four years they attend their institution of choice, which can either cover the full cost of tuition or provide winning students with a set scholarship amount. The program changes the set rate every year based on a weighted average of all participating institutions. For the 2025–26 academic year, the amount is $43,000 for every awarded student. In the 2023–24 academic year, over 7,800 scholarships were awarded, totaling over $328 million.

Kirra Franzese, associate vice president and chief human resources officer, is the college’s Tuition Exchange liaison officer and a member of the Faculty and Staff Benefits Committee that made it possible for the college to join the program. Franzese said the decision to join the Tuition Exchange was inspired by a desire to create more benefits for college employees.

“We’re in a position in higher [education] where we want to be able to recruit and retain the best employees, and this is an absolute way in which we can show that we strive to be an employer of choice,” Franzese said. “We want to support our employees and provide them with the most opportunities that we possibly can.”

The college also has the Dependent Tuition Remission, a program that offers benefits for domestic partners and/or dependent children of eligible faculty who want to attend the college. The program is also available to employees of the college themselves and covers the cost of tuition, minus any scholarships or grants someone might have outside of college aid, whereas the Tuition Exchange is available only to dependents of college faculty and covers all costs up to the set award amount.

The list of Tuition Exchange partner schools includes other institutions in the country, like Syracuse University and Elmira College, as well as institutions in other countries like Trinity Western University in Canada and The American University of Paris in France. Franzese said the main difference between the Dependent Tuition Remission and the Tuition Exchange is the Tuition Exchange allows students to attend schools other than Ithaca College. 

Marc Webster, associate professor in the Department of Music Performance, is a member of the Faculty and Staff Benefits Committee and was heavily involved in the research process behind the college’s involvement in the Tuition Exchange. Webster said the committee was able to convince the college to join the program by looking into 15 competitor institutions’ involvement in similar tuition exchange programs.

“We wrote a proposal, and it was taken seriously and advanced through the ranks, but then we had to prove … that it would provide some financial benefit to the institution, or that it would at least be a cost-neutral model,” Webster said.

Webster said that although the committee began writing their proposal in April, the idea to join the Tuition Exchange has been on employees’ minds much longer.

“As a faculty member, I had just heard from colleagues with dependents that it could be a wonderful benefit to be able to say to their dependents that they could have access to [more] Ithaca College tuition benefits,” Webster said. 

Students who are looking to participate in the Tuition Exchange can select up to 10 partner schools to apply to. Franzese said that although applicants will have to go through the Tuition Exchange Scholarship application on top of the rigorous application processes at each institution, the program is ultimately beneficial because it creates more possibilities for them as well.

“It gives them a lot of opportunity to look at other institutions that they may not have necessarily looked at before, simply because they participate in the Tuition Exchange,” Franzese said.

Ari Kissiloff, assistant professor in the Department of Strategic Communication, has a child who is looking at potential colleges after completing one semester at Tompkins Cortland Community College. Kissiloff said the Tuition Exchange opens up more opportunities for his children that were not available before.

“I think a lot of kids don’t want to go to the school where their parents are, and I think they also want to get out of the area where they grew up and live somewhere new and have a residential experience,” Kissiloff said. “So for my family, it means that there’s a lot more choice.”

Kissiloff also said he believes other college faculty and staff with dependents should take advantage of this opportunity.

“I know other faculty members who say, ‘My kids don’t want to go to school here,’ or they might be interested in a major that we don’t have,” Kissiloff said. “So, there’s a ton of reasons that having more choice is a good thing.”

Franzese said that moving forward, the Faculty and Staff Benefits Committee may look into expanding the scholarship’s eligibility requirements, which are decided by each participating institution, but for now their focus is on employee response to the program.

“Maybe [we’ll] be able to expand our eligibility moving forward, but we’re just excited to see the response we get, specifically from our internal employees,” Franzese said. “We know Ithaca College is a great institution. We know there are going to be people who want to come here and are going to want one of our scholarships, so we’re really excited about potentially providing something for our existing employees to help retain them.”