When the School of the Art Institute of Chicago laid off 20 employees in November, citing financial strain, Joe Behen, dean of student wellness, was among them. He’d worked at the institute for more than 30 years. Though he’s made peace with losing his job—“I’m moving on,” he said—one question lingered: What will happen to his daughter’s tuition-exchange scholarship?
Chloe Behen is a sophomore at the University of Southern California, and she can’t imagine going anywhere else. “USC has been the best school ever,” she said. “And I’m not just saying that. I’ve met the best people, I have the best roommates. I love everything I’m involved in. I love the [cognitive science] major, I love the weather, I love the people, the teachers, the resources here.”
Eighty percent of Chloe’s USC tuition—or about $60,000—is paid via a tuition-exchange scholarship, a program that matches higher education employees and their dependents with scholarships to attend participating institutions at a steep discount. She is one of 7,800 students nationwide participating in the tuition-exchange program this year. Eligibility criteria are set by the export institution—in other words, the institution where the beneficiary is employed decides which employees are able to apply for tuition exchange. In the Behens’ case, that was SAIC. The scholarship is provided by the institution where the employee or their dependent is enrolled—Chloe’s USC. Tuition Exchange, a nonprofit that counts more than 700 member institutions, connects the two of them.
It’s a give-and-take between colleges that ultimately benefits students and employees at all member institutions, explained Kristin Tichenor, president of Tuition Exchange. “The reciprocity at the heart of the exchange program rests on the notion that students are being swapped from one TE campus to the next,” she said.
Joe reached out to SAIC officials on March 14 to ask what will happen to Chloe’s scholarship, but didn’t hear anything back. He followed up on March 21 but still hasn’t received a response.
A spokesperson for SAIC told Inside Higher Ed that the tuition-exchange scholarship benefit “is reserved exclusively for our active, current employees and their qualifying dependents.”
Any regionally accredited nonprofit institution is welcome to join the Tuition Exchange network. Members must pay a $500 one-time initiation fee and $750 in annual membership dues. In addition, the college or university pays Tuition Exchange an annual $55 fee per export student—a cost they may pass along to the participating families. All member institutions commit to offering at least three tuition-exchange scholarships each year, and they are not required to balance those scholarship offerings with their number of export students.
Most scholarships equal either the total cost of tuition at the import institution or at minimum, Tuition Exchange’s annual “set rate,” a running average of tuition prices across all member institutions, Tichenor said. For the 2025–26 academic year, the set rate is $43,000. Next year, it will be $44,000, according to the Tuition Exchange website.
Without her scholarship, Chloe wouldn’t have enrolled at USC.
Tuition Exchange “changed my entire decision,” she said. “I applied to 18 schools. In the end, I was deciding between USC and [the University of California, Los Angeles]. If I had stayed closer to Chicago, I probably would have gone to Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, but out of all of those schools, even with Illinois in-state tuition, USC was cheaper.”
In total, American colleges and universities cut at least 9,000 jobs in 2025. Given the scale of the layoffs and the number of tuition-exchange beneficiaries, Joe estimates that at least dozens, maybe hundreds, of students have had their education similarly thrown into limbo.
On March 11, Tuition Exchange sent a new protocol to member institutions to provide clarity on this issue.
“Over the past year, we have received inquiries from several member institutions asking, ‘How can we extend scholarship eligibility?’ specifically in anticipation of a reduction in force,” Tichenor said. “Our answer to them has been: Good news. You have always had the ability to support affected employees and their student scholars in these situations.”
That means institutions that laid off employees with dependents currently using tuition exchange can decide whether those employees should remain eligible for the remainder of their student’s education—a decision that comes at no extra cost to the institution, Tichenor explained. If the institution affirms a former employee’s eligibility, the family may purchase extended eligibility from Tuition Exchange for $300 per semester.
“Once a family does so, TE Central will take responsibility for certifying scholarship eligibility for the remainder of the student’s degree program, in accordance with their original Tuition Exchange Scholarship offer,” the protocol states. But without the green light from the export institution, Tuition Exchange’s hands are tied.
‘The Worst Nightmare’
To Joe, deciding to extend eligibility is a no-brainer. A lifetime mental health advocate, he’s been on a mission to raise awareness about how the uncertainty and scholarship loss is affecting students’ mental health. He started a petition in early March that calls on college presidents to commit to upholding tuition-exchange benefits for laid-off employees.
“To the outside observer, it’s clear what the right thing to do is … Don’t cut people’s scholarships,” Joe said. “The idea that these students’ parents lose their job and they lose their scholarship, it’s like the worst nightmare.”
He has connected with many other parents on Facebook who are in a similar spot. One user shared that they were laid off from a private institution last year. During their child’s out-of-state college orientation weekend, they learned that they had lost the tuition-exchange scholarship.
Lara DeRuisseau, another Facebook user who connected with Joe, is waiting to hear what will happen to her daughter’s potential tuition-exchange scholarship next year. The Missouri university that her husband, a tenured faculty member, works at was acquired, and he will lose his position within the next year.
“It was like a lot to take in,” she told Inside Higher Ed. “He had a job loss, and then my daughter’s tuition exchange could be gone.”
DeRuisseau doesn’t know whether the university will maintain her daughter’s tuition-exchange eligibility. Her daughter is currently a senior in high school, and the tuition-exchange option “dominated” her college search, DeRuisseau said. It was a competitive process.
“This is not a guarantee by any means,” DeRuisseau said of the scholarships. “It turns out many of the schools were only giving three to four [tuition-exchange] scholarships, and these are schools that have tens of thousands of students.”
Still, her daughter was accepted with a tuition-exchange scholarship to three institutions. If she doesn’t get to keep it, she may have to attend the state flagship, DeRuisseau said.
Joe said he will “borrow, beg and steal” before pulling Chloe out of USC.
“We’re going to figure it out somehow or another,” he said. “We’ll get her through, but not every family is able to do that.”
