Tennessee Tuition Waiver for Dependents of Killed, POW and MIA Veterans

Section 49-7-102 waives tuition, maintenance fees, student activity fees and required registration or matriculation fees, and admits the student without cost, at any institution of higher education owned, operated and maintained by the state. Who it reaches is narrow and specific. Every dependent child in this state under twenty-three years of age whose parent was killed, died as a direct result of injuries received, or has been officially reported as being either a prisoner of war or missing in action while serving honorably as a member of the United States armed forces during a qualifying period of armed conflict, or was formerly a prisoner of war or missing in action under such circumstances. The spouse of such a veteran is covered on the same terms. Read that list again for what is not on it. A service-connected total disability rating does not open this waiver. Neither does permanent and total, nor unemployability, nor a hundred percent schedular rating. Several states extend a dependent tuition benefit to the children of living totally disabled veterans; Tennessee's runs on death, captivity or missing status. A veteran rated 100 percent and alive has no 49-7-102 claim for a child, and this is the most common mistaken belief about the section. For a dependent child the twenty-three is an entry age rather than a cutoff on the benefit. The student must be enrolled as a full-time student before turning twenty-three. Once in, the waiver continues until an undergraduate degree is earned, 135 semester hours are completed, or 150 semester hours are attempted, whichever comes first. The attempted-hours ceiling is worth knowing: withdrawn and failed courses count toward the 150 even though they earn nothing toward the 135. For a spouse the benefit is time limited in a different way. It is available for ten years following the veteran's death, the spouse must be pursuing an undergraduate degree within that window, and it ends immediately on remarriage. A term in progress when the ten years expire runs to the end of that term. The waiver covers tuition, maintenance fees, student activity fees and required registration or matriculation fees. It does not name books, housing, meal plans or course-specific fees, and those are where the remaining cost sits. It applies to state-owned institutions. A private Tennessee college is outside the section.