Nevada Fee Waivers for the National Guard and for POW and MIA Families

Two waivers in the same run of sections, with different populations and one shared weakness. The Guard waiver, NRS 396.544. Subsection 1: "The Board of Regents of the University of Nevada may grant a waiver of registration fees and laboratory fees for any member of the active Nevada National Guard, including, without limitation, a recruit, who attends a school within the System as a full-time or part-time student." Three things to take from that. "May grant", not shall. This is discretionary, unlike the Purple Heart waiver in NRS 396.5443, which is mandatory. In practice the Board operates it as a programme, but a member should not treat the statute as an entitlement and should confirm current availability and any application deadline with the institution. "Including, without limitation, a recruit". A person who has enlisted but not yet shipped is inside the section. The heading of the section refers to "reimbursement upon failure of recruit to enter Guard", so the waiver granted to a recruit is recoverable if the recruit does not actually enter the Guard. A recruit taking the waiver is taking on a contingent debt. Part-time students qualify. Many state Guard education benefits require full-time enrolment; this one names both. The assignment provision is the distinctive part. Subsection 2 allows a member of the active Nevada National Guard "who has reenlisted" to assign the waiver to a spouse or child, "in lieu of using the waiver himself or herself and regardless of whether the member was granted a waiver pursuant to this section before reenlistment". So reenlistment is the trigger, prior use does not disqualify, and the member gives up their own use for the period of the assignment. Registration and laboratory fees are the covered items. The broader "any other mandatory fees" language of the Purple Heart waiver is absent here, so the Guard waiver is narrower in scope as well as discretionary. The POW and MIA family waiver, NRS 396.5445. Subsection 1: "The Board of Regents may grant a waiver of registration fees and laboratory fees for a spouse or child of a person who is identified as a prisoner of war or missing in action while performing his or her duties as a member of the Armed Forces of the United States." Again may rather than shall, and again registration and laboratory fees only. The valuable clause is the second sentence: "For the purpose of assessing fees and charges against a person to whom such a waiver is granted, including, without limitation, tuition charges pursuant to NRS 396.540, the person shall be deemed to be a bona fide resident of this State." NRS 396.540 is the nonresident tuition charge. A nonresident student at a Nevada institution pays tuition on top of the registration fee, and that tuition is the large number. Deeming the student a bona fide Nevada resident removes it. So this waiver does two separate things: it waives registration and laboratory fees, and it converts the student to resident status for tuition. A spouse or child living out of state can attend at resident rates. Note the status the section turns on. The service member must be "identified as a prisoner of war or missing in action", which is a current status determination rather than a historical one, and the section contains no requirement that the member be from Nevada or that the family live here. The heading refers to "verification of status", so the institution will require documentation of the determination. What neither section does is cover books, housing or food, and neither creates a cap in dollars or semesters on its face. Because both are discretionary, the operative limits are in Board of Regents policy rather than in the statute, and that policy is where a member or a family member should start. For completeness, the mandatory Purple Heart waiver in NRS 396.5443 and the graduate degree waiver in NRS 396.5446 are covered separately in this catalog, and NRS 396.5447 authorises the Board of Regents to defray the cost of granting waivers to veterans enrolled in graduate programmes.