Texas Hazlewood Act Tuition Exemption

The Hazlewood Act, Texas Education Code section 54.341, exempts a qualified veteran from tuition and most fee charges at a Texas public institution of higher education for up to a cumulative 150 credit hours. The 150 hours is a per-person cumulative total across every institution, so hours used at a community college count against hours available at a university. The veteran test has several parts, and all of them apply. The veteran has to have entered the service at a location in Texas, declared Texas as the home of record, or otherwise have been a Texas resident at the time of entry. Active duty has to exceed 180 days, not counting training. The discharge has to be honorable. The veteran has to currently reside in Texas. And the veteran has to have no federal education benefit left to use, or a federal benefit worth less than the exemption for the term: the exemption does not apply for a term in which federal education benefits equal or exceed its value, and the combined federal and state benefit cannot exceed the actual cost of tuition and fees. In practice a veteran uses the Post-9/11 GI Bill first and Hazlewood after it runs out. What is covered is tuition and most mandatory fees. What is not covered is living expenses, books, and supply fees. Institutions also generally carry out the student service fee as an exception. A student has to be in a degree-seeking program and has to meet the institution's satisfactory academic progress standard. The Legacy provision is the part that gets used most and understood least. A veteran who qualifies but has unused hours may assign them to a child. The child has to be 25 or younger on the first day of the semester for which the exemption is claimed. Only one child uses Legacy hours at a time, and a veteran can reassign hours a child did not use to another child. Legacy hours come out of the veteran's own 150, so they are a transfer, not an addition. Separately, and not as a transfer, the spouse and each child of a service member who died in the line of duty, died as a result of a service-related injury or illness, is missing in action, or became totally disabled for purposes of employability as a result of a service-related injury or illness is each entitled to a full 150 credit hours. Each eligible person gets their own 150 in that case, and the Texas Veterans Commission administers eligibility. Apply through the institution's veterans office with a DD-214 and proof of Texas residency, plus a VA benefits statement showing remaining federal entitlement. The Texas Veterans Commission publishes the policy and procedure manual the institutions follow.